Security researcher discovers a bug on Steam and Valve compensates him with $ 20.000

Spotter of a Steam bug will receive a $ 20.000 reward from Valve for finding a major security hole.

There are many friends of others who explore all existing systems looking for security flaws that allow access to user accounts and steal the information that is included in these systems. There are also many people who work autonomously every day to hunt down all the security holes. Artem Moskowsky is a 'bug hunter' and has found one for Valve who has decided to make up for his work by finding a bug on Steam.

Valve will pay a 'bug hunter' who has found a bug on Steam.

Artem Moskowsky found a very important problem within Steam that allowed the Valve store to generate a large number of free games of any of the titles that can be found in this store. Moskowsky found this problem in August of this year and informed the company of the problem.

The company acknowledges that they had a security problem on Steam that could have cost billions and has compensated this researcher $ 20.000 for finding the problem. If we compare it with the potential losses of the company, it is a fairly short sum, but usually unless it is a critical problem, it is more or less what you pay for finding security flaws.

The bug within Steam was based on a bug within the platform's developer tools. Those who had access to these special features could get free keys to any of the published titles. Although the problem seems to have been active for a long time, there is no evidence that someone exploited this security hole and the company has already fixed it, therefore, Valve and all developers, can rest assured.

Source: BBC