Steam Forums hacked.

[SMMDigital]

Hacker$ are pond scum? D u not change things in rw? do u just have all default locos and rolling stock? Have you in any way changed your rw files? You might be a hacker.

Do you sell those changes for money without proper permission or licensing? Do you change them and insert viri to bring down RSC or gain personal information about others who play the game? Do you upload your changes to pirate sites? Difference between hackers and those who change the game to suit their taste or enhance community support. If RSC meant that no changes could be made to their files, they would immediately pull the World Editor, Serz, and all of their blog posts concerning how to make changes to the game.

[Hawk]

Remember when someone was trying to break into our accounts by guessing our passwords?

http://railworksamerica.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1747

Oh! That wasn't an attempt to hack the forum. That was just the typical script kiddies trying brute force attacks to try and get members log in data and to try and log in as them.
That's a little different than actually hacking a forum.

read a few days ago on Yahoo news that some of the top brass at the Pentagon are recommending that we don't start any major wars because China and Russia may pull the plug on our military technology ( as in hacking ).

Yep! China are the ones we need to worry about, as well as Russia, but China mainly. They've got some pretty good hackers over there.
They're mainly interested in the government and financial networks. That's where they'll benefit the most.

[SMMDigital]

Cant say who I work for, but we were hacked by the Chinese earlier this year. The IT guys caught them and shut them out of the critical stuff, but let them wander around to see what they would actually try to do. As we were told later by the higher ups " the Chinese aren't worth a dern at inventing anything, but they are really good at making copies." They were looking for technical process information.

[SMMDigital]

Very interesting. Just read an article on Time.com stating that playing in "Offline" mode is a no-no because your password is stored "locally"? This just keeps getting better and better.

[Dan]

What I find ironic is that people giving this as a reason not to get RW and to stick with MSTS. It's ironic because these people are quite willing to hand their credit card details to MSTS payware vendors, or to get premium access to UKTS or TS, or to buy books from Amazon. All of whom are just as vulnerable to being hacked as anyone else. The moment you put your credit card details into a website is the moment you become a potential victim of hacking.

Even if you don't ever enter your details you are still a potential victim I know people who've had their cards cloned at ATMs, as I said before, my mother had her card cloned by a guy behind the till when she was buying petrol. So the whole argument that RS should abandon steam and ship the game to stores is a red herring because you can be defrauded, hacked or robbed in any number of ways. And having been the victim of an attempted mugging I would far rather people tried to steal my details from a distance using a machine than trying to hit me over the head.

[SMMDigital]

Dan, you are correct - those little plastic cards get put into to toooo many strange slots to simply blame id theft for the reason to yank RW off of Steam. The Time article brought up the comparison with another game delivery system that recently got hacked - Sony. They went down for a month. Now being that most people do not play RW in offline mode, if Steam had went down hard the same way, I imagine people would be a lot less charitable-feeling towards RSC right now. And it's even more scary. IMO, for RSC. Think of what would happen to your small business if your largest logistics operator crashed for a month! Depending on cash-on-hand and whether or not you could pull a hat trick and get a back-up delivery plan, that kind of thing could bankrupt you.

[canadiannational1996]

Their not updating us with news neither Steam or Railworks.

[OldProf]

Thanks. I can understand though why people recycle passwords, I have a great deal of difficulty in remembering my passwords, especially for sites that I don't log into very often. When you have to remember 25 different passwords it can get a bit difficult.

I used to have the same problem, but then I discovered RoboForm, a little gem that not only remembers log-ins and passwords, but easily generates better passwords than I can invent and remembers them for me. The latest versions make it easy to install the utility on multiple computers (or on a thumb drive) and always have your database available. The program's home page is http://www.roboform.com/ . An annual subscription costs $19.95, which may sound expensive to some, but I find it well worthwhile. Before anyone asks, I don't work for Roboform or receive any compensation from them: I just like the program.

Tom Pallen

[DashingDan]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15690187

[Hawk]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15690187

Merged with the thread already started on this.

[kevhead]

This is true smm but, that is not hacking that is stealing and criminal acts. Hackers are often bashed by people who do not understand to have the knowledge to learn. I 4 one am glade that people like bill gates and Steve jobs had the courage to go beyond that. Other wise we would not be having this conversation. Or have this train simulator.

[arizonachris]

Hackers are criminals that do evil. Those that make mods to games and sims are not hackers. This is why source code for some games is made public. Just look at the hundreds of Half Life 2 mods! And the hundreds of Railworks mods (DLC and third party add on's and mods!)

There is a very real defining line between a hacker and a modder. Hackers will steal you personal information. Not a modder. Just my

[Chessie8638]

I don't know why I'm getting into this, since it's not really on topic. And since mentioning "hacker" on a video game forums results in a flame war but whatever:
I heart wikipedia.

HACKER:
Hacker (computer security): People committed to circumvention of computer security. This primarily concerns unauthorized remote computer break-ins via a communication networks such as the Internet (Black hats), but also includes those who debug or fix security problems (White hats), and the morally ambiguous Grey hats. See Hacker (computer security).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28 ... ecurity%29

Hacker (hobbyist): A community of enthusiast computer programmers and systems designers, originated in the 1960s around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) and MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. This community is notable for launching the free software movement. The World Wide Web and the Internet itself are also hacker artifacts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28hobbyist%29

Hacker (programmer subculture): The hobbyist home computing community, focusing on hardware in the late 1970s (e.g. the Homebrew Computer Club) and on software (computer games, software cracking, the demoscene) in the 1980s/1990s. The community included Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Bill Gates and created the personal computing industry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28 ... culture%29

Today, mainstream usage of “hacker” mostly refers to computer criminals, due to the mass media usage of the word since the 1980s.

I'm not backing up those who steal info and whatnot. They can rot in ______... You can fill in the blank.

[SMMDigital]

Hacker (hobbyist): A community of enthusiast computer programmers and systems designers, originated in the 1960s around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) and MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. This community is notable for launching the free software movement. The World Wide Web and the Internet itself are also hacker artifacts.

OMG we are even bigger nerds than I thought! So was Steam brought down by computer criminals or a bunch of model railroaders who were PO'd because it's such a cumbersome service?

That was tongue-n-cheek for all of you humorless out there. Just thought it was funny that when I read the MIT website, it listed the group as "model railroaders, railfans, and hackers alike". Irony is so cool! Thanks Chessie for the enlightenment.

[Dan]

Still no response from account support, but now its working again all of the sudden. Password changed successfully. So there must have been something going on in the servers/client software....

I think I'm going to keep steam in offline mode for a while until this all calms down!

I noticed today that there was an update to Steam which said that one of the features improved concerned changing of passwords. So maybe this might have been your glitch and it might fix it.