Steam "Anti-hack" addition to client

featherfoot07

featherfoot07

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sounds pretty legit, but lets see how stable it is and how long it lasts

Steam Guard Now in Beta
Steam Blog - Valve
Steam Guard, a new Steam account security feature offering two-factor authentication, is now available in beta. As a Steam account holder, you can now take advantage of this additional level of account security, further prohibiting others from gaining access to your account.

As a beta participant, once you've verified your email address with Steam, Steam Guard becomes available for your use and is enabled for your Steam account by default.

With Steam Guard enabled, anyone attempting to login as you from an unrecognized computer must first provide additional, one-time authorization. A special access code will be sent to your contact email address, and this code must be entered into Steam before your first login on an unfamiliar computer is complete. You will also be notified if any login attempts from computers other than those you've authorized occur. Steam Guard essentially acts as a form of "User Rights Management," where you as the user have greater control over access to your stuff.

"Account phishing and hijacking are our top support issues," said Gabe Newell, President of Valve. "With Steam Guard, we've taken a big step towards giving customers the account security they need as they purchase more and more digital goods."

Gabe demonstrated further development of Steam Guard today at the CeBIT computing trade show in Hannover, Germany. In addition to email-based authentication, Steam Guard will soon offer other forms of secondary authentication, such as Intel? Identity Protection Technology, a hardware-based security feature available with the new 2nd Generation Intel? Core? and Core? vPro? processors. With IPT, secondary authentication is effortless, as it is provided by the chipset itself.

To opt into the latest Steam client beta and begin protecting your account with Steam Guard, launch the Steam client and visit Steam Settings' Account tab, then changing your beta participation to ?Steam Update.?

For more information about Steam Guard and Intel? Identity Protection Technology, visit Steam Support's knowledge base
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iamevilbear said:
Requires an Intel processor so it's hardware based it seems.
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In addition to email-based authentication, Steam Guard will soon offer other forms of secondary authentication, such as Intel? Identity Protection Technology, a hardware-based security
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From my reading of it you will get the basic opt-in without the hardware and in the future once its been developed you can get the chips.
 
Seems to be a bit much for account security, but its probably the best way to counter account phishing
 
Kotaku wrote an article on this before it was released. It's Valve in conjunction with Intel. It's entirely software based until they add the second layer of protection on hardware. The program is not only for Valve but will be used on most Intel products.

All-in-all, what I read from Kotaku, people will not be able to change any vital information such as: password, email, etc. Unless, they are directly logged on to the master computer, which is probably the computer you registered with or logged onto Steam with first after the patch.

What this means is that only you or people with direct access to your computer may change passwords, emails, etc. A big step for account security I would say.
 
I'm a huge fan of additional forms of security like this. I can't wait to see what else they introduce.
 
Dominion said:
I'm a huge fan of additional forms of security like this. I can't wait to see what else they introduce.
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Valve just announced a system that asks for a blood sample everytime you login
 
Actually, this sounds like a fairly good idea.
If phishing is one of their top support issues, as Gabe said, it's quite possibly worth an extra layer of authentication.

Not like it's that hard to reach our own email accounts, anyway.
 
Next they're going to ask you to buy a special webcam for facial and eye recognition. Extra security -and- they get more money in the process.
 
The best and free anti hack is the one called don't click on links from people asking your password.
 
I use multiple PCs so I won't be using this, I'm not fail enough to get hacked lol.
 
Why don't they just implement a simple program to have a whitelist of HWID's.

This will stop phishing but wont solve an issue with a RAT .. sadly.
 
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