Artem Moskowsky who is a self-described “bug hunter” came across a glitch that allowed him to generate thousands of free keys for any game on Steam. One would keep such info to himself but he reported it to Steam and got a bountiful thank you.
Moskowsky discovered and reported the bug back in August, but Valve only allowed the information to go public recently. For his troubles, the company paid him $20,000—as opposed to a lifetime of free games, which is what would’ve happened if this was a feel-good episode of a sitcom.
According to a summary by Valve on bug bounty site HackerOne, the bug took advantage of an issue with Steam’s developer tools. Using “specific parameters,” anyone with access to those tools could make the service spit out keys for games that didn’t belong to them.
Valve said an investigation did not find evidence of the bug actually being misused. That’s good news for Valve, because speaking with tech publication The Register, Moskowsky said that in one case he managed to trick the system into giving him 36,000 keys for Portal 2.
Moskowsky discovered and reported the bug back in August, but Valve only allowed the information to go public recently. For his troubles, the company paid him $20,000—as opposed to a lifetime of free games, which is what would’ve happened if this was a feel-good episode of a sitcom.
According to a summary by Valve on bug bounty site HackerOne, the bug took advantage of an issue with Steam’s developer tools. Using “specific parameters,” anyone with access to those tools could make the service spit out keys for games that didn’t belong to them.
Valve said an investigation did not find evidence of the bug actually being misused. That’s good news for Valve, because speaking with tech publication The Register, Moskowsky said that in one case he managed to trick the system into giving him 36,000 keys for Portal 2.
