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Valve Announces “Steam Guard”

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No more valve/steam puns? Aww.

Valve Announces “Steam Guard”

Valve has just announced a new Steam and Steamworks feature named Steam Guard, which will give Steam users greatly increased account security.

Steam Guard allows Steam users to link the management of their account to a specific PC. Any attempts to change account settings by any other PC will be stopped in their tracks. Users will be notified of any attempts to change these settings, or to log into their account.

Steam Guard will take advantage of upcoming Intel® Identity Protection Technology (Intel® IPT), an encrypted, hardware-based feature available with the new 2nd Generation Intel® CoreT and Intel® CoreT vProT processors.  IPT generates a new numerical password every 30 seconds, integrating into the processor functionality that previously required a separate card or key fob.

Fancy, and quite awesome!

As always, Steam Guard is available through Steamworks, so third parties will be able to incorporate these features into their projects.

“Account phishing and hijacking are our #1 support issues,” said Gabe Newell, President of Valve.  “With Intel’s IPT and Steam Guard, we’ve taken a big step towards giving customers the account security they need as they purchase more and more digital goods.”

“We expect to see widespread adoption of hardware-based security like Intel IPT by other service providers,” said Doug Lombardi, Valve’s Vice President of Marketing.  “If as a customer you are buying movies, music, games, or digital goods, you want to know that they are more secure than your physical goods.”

“With over 30 million accounts worldwide, Steam is an ideal platform for Intel IPT,” said George Thangadurai, General Manager of PC Client Services at Intel. “Those running Steam are investing in a robust digital collection of PC games. By adding hardware-based protection to these investments, we hope to bolster the amazing success of platforms such as Steam.”

Sounds really great. We’re glad Valve is investing in more robust security measures.

I suppose we can say goodbye to phishers! Nice knowing you.

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9 Comments

  1. But what if you link the management of your account to a PC and then some time, the PC gets broken and you have to buy a new one? Will you be able to change it to another PC? If yes, then someone who is not supposed to manage the account can change it too, right? I think I got lost in confusion…

    • If the PC is broken… well, I don’t know. And it was my understanding that anyone who does not have permission to manage the account cannot modify ANY account settings.

  2. STEAM GUARD
    ah yeh

  3. I have a laptop and a desktop, hopefully I can make both of them “managers”.
    Looks great, although I’ve luckily not had any encounters with phising, etc.

    • I fondly remember my first phishing encounter. It was with a fine German fellow, who changed my password one Friday evening. So I changed it back. Then he changed it back. We kept it up like that until he suddenly gave up. My heart shattered in a million little pieces.

  4. Really like the idea of this, I hope it allows multiple PC’s/Macs to one account as I use it on 3, PC, Mac and Ubuntu Linux!

    Also maybe if they add a separate secure password for the guard for logging in from other locations as a one off, eg. lan centers/partys, friends houses.

    • its not about logging in, my understanding was that it prevents others from changing your account details, eg your password. that means a hijacker can still get your account and maybe get it vac banned, but he cannot change the password.

      • Of course it’s also about logging in! What use would the rest of the system be, if it couldn’t prevent the hacker from actually logging into your account?

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