Valve has announced that users are not at risk playing games such as Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) and Team Fortress 2 (TF2), even after their source code was leaked on 4chan and torrent sites on the Internet. The leak has caused a stir in the online communities of the two games. Players are warning each other that hackers may be exploiting the leaked source code. The source code can be used to compromise computers connected to CS:GO and TF2 servers . Warnings are circulating constantly on Twitter and in the official / r / counterstrike and / r / tf2 subreddits.
Valve's marketing director, Doug Lombardi, told ZDNet that there is no reason for players to worry or stop playing the games. However, it is recommended, as always, to play them on official servers for greater security. Valve is investigating the incident and is asking users to report any information about who is behind the leak, through the company's official page.
Source code leak on 4CHAN
Some information about the leak has already started to emerge. So far, it is known that the files were first published on 4chan, from where they were immediately shared on various torrent sites, gaming forums, as well as Twitter and Reddit. The leaked files are source code that Valve shared with game developers in late 2017.
Lombardi said that Valve was aware that the source code was first leaked online in 2018. However, the initial leak was not widely publicized. One of the few people who knew about the 2018 leak was Tyler McVicker, owner of the Valve News Network, who outlined the events leading up to today's second leak in a Twitch stream. On Twitter, McViker also said that he knew who was behind the leak, noting that he plans to report the person responsible to Valve's legal department.
However, despite Valve's assurances that players face no risk when playing these two games, this may not hold true in the long term. Access to a game's source code always makes a potential exploit much easier, therefore, players rightly warn each other, even though such a thing may not constitute a threat at this moment, but it is certainly something that should be examined further in the upcoming period.
Hackers used game servers to infect players with malware. In March 2019, Russian antivirus company Dr.Web published a report about hackers exploiting a vulnerability in the game Counter Strike 1.6 to infect users with the Belonard malware. At the time, Dr.Web said that nearly 39% of CS 1.6 servers contained malicious code that attempted to infect users with malware. Today's source code leak raises the possibility of similar attacks against CS:GO and TF2 servers. However, they can take some time to develop, so Valve can easily address them with frequent updates , since both games are still played by users.
