The IT Nerd

Valve, the company behind the Steam video game platform has announced a new security feature after multiple reports of game updates being poisoned with malware:

As part of a security update, any Steamworks account setting builds live on the default/public branch of a released app will need to have a phone number associated with their account, so that Steam can text you a confirmation code before continuing. The same will be true for any Steamworks account that needs to add new users. This change will go live on October 24, 2023, so be sure to add a phone number to your account now. We also plan on adding this requirement for other Steamworks actions in the future.

This action was timely as Shadow PC got pwned because one employee downloaded a Steam game boobytrapped with malware.  Ken Westin, Field CISO, Panther Labs had this comment:

“This reflects a trend Panther has been seeing over the past few years as adversaries shift the focus of their attacks to developers who often have access to the crown jewels of tech companies — their source code. When attackers gain access to code repositories, DevOps tools, and cloud infrastructure it can be quite lucrative as they can not only steal code and deploy malware, but also inject malicious code to infect customers downstream. This trend is increasingly being utilized by not only criminal groups, but also nation-state actors as we have seen with the Lazarus Group out of North Korea. Organizations need to take additional measures to not only secure developers themselves, but also the environments they interact with on a daily basis — those with privileged access are particularly vulnerable.”

Perhaps other game platforms, or other platforms that distribute software should look at their security measures so as not to be the next vehicle for an attack. I say that because this is a great move by Steam to ensure the security of its platform.

There’s a lot of gamers out there that have top of the line hardware and are also running Windows 10 or 11. But there’s also a significant camp of gamers who don’t have the latest and greatest hardware, and are also running operating systems like Windows 7. If you’re in the latter camp, Valve who makes the popular Steam game distribution system have a message for you. You need to upgrade to at least Windows 10 by the start of 2024, or else:

As of January 1 2024, Steam will officially stop supporting the Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 operating systems. After that date, the Steam Client will no longer run on those versions of Windows. In order to continue running Steam and any games or other products purchased through Steam, users will need to update to a more recent version of Windows.

This change is required as core features in Steam rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome, which no longer functions on older versions of Windows. In addition, future versions of Steam will require Windows feature and security updates only present in Windows 10 and above.

Now I’ve seen some outrage online about this. But seriously folks, Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 have been deemed end of support in the case of Windows 8.1, and end of life in the case of Windows 7. That means that there’s no technical support, no bug fixes, and no security fixes. The latter is the important part as no security fixes means that your chances of getting pwned by something are way higher than the person running Windows 10 or 11. But beyond that, you’ll be seeing messages from other software companies saying that they can’t support you with new versions of their software, not to mention bug fixes. So as difficult as it may by it’s time to bite the bullet and buy that new gaming rig that you know that you want with Windows 11 or Windows 10 on it. You’ll be better off as a result.