- Top reward
- $7,500
- Top severity paid
- Critical
- Assets in scope
- 21
- Public CVEs
- 29
- Last change
- No changes yet
At a glance
What to know before you start testing.
- Pays up to $7,500
- for critical bugs.
- Report on HackerOne
- Submit through the program page.
- Partial safe harbor
- Some legal protection; read the terms.
- Publish after a fix
- Coordinate the timing with the company.
Rewards
What HackerOne lists as the payout for each severity.
| Severity | Relative size | Reward |
|---|---|---|
| Critical |
|
$7,500 from $2,500 |
| High |
|
$2,500 from $750 |
| Medium |
|
$750 from $200 |
| Low |
|
$200 from $100 |
- Safe harbor
-
Partial
We will generally permit external discussions of them (such as blog posts), with our permission.
Summarised with AI from the program policy on HackerOne, read 12 Nov 2026, and checked word for word against it. Read the original
Scope
21 assets you may test, 7 excluded.
Web 15
- api.steampowered.com Critical
- developer.valvesoftware.com Low
- help.steampowered.com Critical
- partner.steamgames.com Critical
- partner.steampowered.com Critical
- playartifact.com Critical
- steamcommunity.com Critical
- storefront.steampowered.com Critical No bounty
- store.steampowered.com Critical
- support.steampowered.com Critical
- wiki.teamfortress.com Critical No bounty
- www.counter-strike.net Critical
- www.dota2.com Critical
- www.teamfortress.com Critical
- www.valvesoftware.com Critical
Android apps 1
- com.valvesoftware.Steam Critical
iOS apps 1
- com.valvesoftware.Steam Critical
Source code 1
- https://github.com/valvesoftware Critical No bounty
Wildcard domains 1
- *.steamstatic.com Critical
Products and areas 2
- Steam Client Critical
- Steam Servers Critical
Out of scope (7)
- store.valvesoftware.com
- valvestore.forfansbyfans.com
- list.valvesoftware.com
- translation.steampowered.com
- valvestore.forfansbyfans.com,store.valvesoftware.com
- www.steamgames.com
- www.steampowered.com
Rules
What the policy asks of you, and the bug types it won't reward, quoted from Valve (via HackerOne)'s policy. "We" in these lines means the program, not this site.
While testing
-
Let us know as soon as possible upon discovery of a potential security issue, and we'll make every effort to quickly resolve the issue.
-
Provide us a reasonable amount of time to resolve the issue before any disclosure to the public or a third party.
-
Make a good faith effort to avoid privacy violations, destruction of data, and interruption or degradation of our service.
-
Only interact with accounts you own or with explicit permission of the account holder.
Not accepted
-
Vulnerabilities reported by use of automated tools/scanners, without accompanying validation / POC
-
User enumeration without any further impact
-
Clickjacking without a well-defined security/privacy risk
-
Disclosure of software version numbers
-
Attacks that require social engineering/phishing
-
Attacks that require physical access to the user’s device
-
Open redirects or linkfilter bypasses that cannot be leveraged to programmatically exfiltrate sensitive information
-
Content Spoofing / Text Injection that cannot be leveraged for XSS or sensitive data disclosure
-
Host header injection without a specific proof of concept
-
Self XSS, or XSS that only affects out-of-date browsers
-
Denial of Service Attacks
-
Broken links to third party sites
-
Game bugs, glitches and gameplay exploits
-
Reports against Source Engine tools, e.g. Hammer, Source Filmmaker
-
Reports that require the user to open crafted game content: demo files, BSPs, etc not delivered as part of the exploit
Summarised with AI from the program policy on HackerOne, read 12 Nov 2026, and checked word for word against it. Read the original
Changes
Tracked since 11 Nov 2026. Last checked 17 minutes ago.
No changes yet. When the rewards or scope move, you will see it here and in the RSS feed.
Public CVEs
Published vulnerabilities in this vendor's products, from the NVD.
| CVE | Summary | Severity | Published |
|---|---|---|---|
| CVE-2023-38312 | A directory traversal vulnerability in Valve Counter-Strike 8684 allows a client (with remote control access to a game server) to read arbitrary files from the underlying server via the motdfile console variable. | High 7.5 | 15 Oct 2023 |
| CVE-2023-35855 | A buffer overflow in Counter-Strike through 8684 allows a game server to execute arbitrary code on a remote client's machine by modifying the lservercfgfile console variable. | Critical 9.8 | 19 Jun 2023 |
| CVE-2023-30382 | A buffer overflow in the component hl.exe of Valve Half-Life up to 5433873 allows attackers to execute arbitrary code and escalate privileges by supplying crafted parameters. | High 7.3 | 23 May 2023 |
| CVE-2021-30481 | Valve Steam before 2021-04-17, when a Source engine game is installed, allows remote authenticated users to execute arbitrary code because of a buffer overflow that occurs for a Steam invite after one click. | High 8.0 | 10 Apr 2021 |
| CVE-2020-6017 | Valve's Game Networking Sockets prior to version v1.2.0 improperly handles long unreliable segments in function SNP_ReceiveUnreliableSegment() when configured to support plain-text messages, leading to a Heap-Based Buffer Overflow and resulting in a memory corruption and possibly even a remote code execution. | Critical 9.8 | 3 Dec 2020 |
| CVE-2020-6018 | Valve's Game Networking Sockets prior to version v1.2.0 improperly handles long encrypted messages in function AES_GCM_DecryptContext::Decrypt() when compiled using libsodium, leading to a Stack-Based Buffer Overflow and resulting in a memory corruption and possibly even a remote code execution. | Critical 9.8 | 2 Dec 2020 |
| CVE-2020-6016 | Valve's Game Networking Sockets prior to version v1.2.0 improperly handles unreliable segments with negative offsets in function SNP_ReceiveUnreliableSegment(), leading to a Heap-Based Buffer Underflow and a free() of memory not from the heap, resulting in a memory corruption and probably even a remote code execution. | Critical 9.8 | 18 Nov 2020 |
| CVE-2020-6019 | Valve's Game Networking Sockets prior to version v1.2.0 improperly handles inlined statistics messages in function CConnectionTransportUDPBase::Received_Data(), leading to an exception thrown from libprotobuf and resulting in a crash. | High 7.5 | 13 Nov 2020 |
| CVE-2020-15530 | An issue was discovered in Valve Steam Client 2.10.91.91. The installer allows local users to gain NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM privileges because some parts of %PROGRAMFILES(X86)%\Steam and/or %COMMONPROGRAMFILES(X86)%\Steam have weak permissions during a critical time window. An attacker can make this time window arbitrarily long by using opportunistic locks. | High 7.8 | 5 Jul 2020 |
| CVE-2020-12242 | Valve Source allows local users to gain privileges by writing to the /tmp/hl2_relaunch file, which is later executed in the context of a different user account. | High 7.8 | 27 Apr 2020 |
| CVE-2020-9005 | meshsystem.dll in Valve Dota 2 through 2020-02-17 allows remote attackers to achieve code execution or denial of service by creating a gaming server with a crafted map, and inviting a victim to this server. A GetValue call is mishandled. | High 7.8 | 17 Feb 2020 |
| CVE-2020-7951 | meshsystem.dll in Valve Dota 2 before 7.23e allows remote attackers to achieve code execution or denial of service by creating a gaming server and inviting a victim to this server, because a crafted map is affected by memory corruption. | High 7.8 | 27 Jan 2020 |
| CVE-2020-7952 | rendersystemdx9.dll in Valve Dota 2 before 7.23f allows remote attackers to achieve code execution or denial of service by creating a gaming server and inviting a victim to this server, because a crafted map is affected by memory corruption. | High 7.8 | 27 Jan 2020 |
| CVE-2020-7949 | schemasystem.dll in Valve Dota 2 before 7.23f allows remote attackers to achieve code execution or denial of service by creating a gaming server and inviting a victim to this server, because a crafted map is mishandled during a GetValue call. | High 7.8 | 27 Jan 2020 |
| CVE-2020-7950 | meshsystem.dll in Valve Dota 2 before 7.23f allows remote attackers to achieve code execution or denial of service by creating a gaming server and inviting a victim to this server, because a crafted map is mishandled during a vulnerable function call. | High 7.8 | 27 Jan 2020 |
| CVE-2019-17180 | Valve Steam Client before 2019-09-12 allows placing or appending partially controlled filesystem content, as demonstrated by file modifications on Windows in the context of NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM. This could lead to denial of service, elevation of privilege, or unspecified other impact. | High 7.8 | 4 Oct 2019 |
| CVE-2019-15943 | vphysics.dll in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive before 1.37.1.1 allows remote attackers to achieve code execution or denial of service by creating a gaming server and inviting a victim to this server, because a crafted map is mishandled during a memset call. | High 8.8 | 19 Sep 2019 |
| CVE-2019-15944 | In Counter-Strike: Global Offensive before 8/29/2019, community game servers can display unsafe HTML in a disconnection message. | Medium 5.3 | 5 Sep 2019 |
| CVE-2019-15315 | Valve Steam Client for Windows through 2019-08-16 allows privilege escalation (to NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM) because local users can replace the current versions of SteamService.exe and SteamService.dll with older versions that lack the CVE-2019-14743 patch. | High 7.8 | 21 Aug 2019 |
| CVE-2019-15316 | Valve Steam Client for Windows through 2019-08-20 has weak folder permissions, leading to privilege escalation (to NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM) via crafted use of CreateMountPoint.exe and SetOpLock.exe to leverage a TOCTOU race condition. | High 7.0 | 21 Aug 2019 |
| CVE-2019-14743 | In Valve Steam Client for Windows through 2019-08-07, HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Valve\Steam has explicit "Full control" for the Users group, which allows local users to gain NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM access. | Medium 6.6 | 7 Aug 2019 |
| CVE-2018-12270 | In Valve Steam 1528829181 BETA, it is possible to perform a homograph / homoglyph attack to create fake URLs in the client, which may trick users into visiting unintended web sites. | Medium 5.4 | 20 May 2019 |
| CVE-2017-17877 | An issue was discovered in Valve Steam Link build 643. When the SSH daemon is enabled for local development, the device is publicly available via IPv6 TCP port 22 over the internet (with stateless address autoconfiguration) by default, which makes it easier for remote attackers to obtain access by guessing 24 bits of the MAC address and attempting a root login. This can be exploited in conjunction | Critical 9.8 | 27 Dec 2017 |
| CVE-2017-17878 | An issue was discovered in Valve Steam Link build 643. Root passwords longer than 8 characters are truncated because of the default use of DES (aka the CONFIG_FEATURE_DEFAULT_PASSWD_ALGO="des" setting). | Critical 9.8 | 27 Dec 2017 |
| CVE-2016-5237 | Valve Steam 3.42.16.13 uses weak permissions for the files in the Steam program directory, which allows local users to modify the files and possibly gain privileges as demonstrated by a Trojan horse Steam.exe file. | Medium 4.8 | 23 Jan 2017 |
| CVE-2015-7985 | Valve Steam 2.10.91.91 uses weak permissions (Users: read and write) for the Install folder, which allows local users to gain privileges via a Trojan horse steam.exe file. | High 7.2 | 24 Nov 2015 |
| CVE-2015-4016 | The client detection protocol in Valve Steam allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (process crash) via a crafted response to a broadcast packet. | Medium 5.0 | 20 May 2015 |
| CVE-2013-7128 | Valve Bug Reporter in the valve-bugreporter package 2.10+bsos1 in Valve SteamOS Beta stores cleartext credentials in a .valve-bugreporter.cfg file upon a Remember Credentials action, which allows local users to obtain sensitive information by reading this file. | Low 2.1 | 17 Dec 2013 |
| CVE-2008-7203 | Valve Software Half-Life Counter-Strike 1.6 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via multiple crafted login packets. | Medium 5.0 | 11 Sep 2009 |
Original policy
Copied from hackerone.com on 12 Nov 2026. The summaries on this page are made from it; the live page may have changed since.
If you are a Steam user and have a security issue to report regarding your personal Steam account, please visit our support site https://help.steampowered.com/. This includes password problems, login issues, suspected fraud, and account abuse issues.
Please read the scope, bounty, and severity information carefully before submission. Our intent is to guide researcher attention to the most important areas and to reward the most actionable reports.
Scope
This program covers the Steam platform and current games developed and published by Valve. Please review the reward tables and scope descriptions below.
The Steam components in scope are:
- Steam Client, Steam Client Service, and the SteamCmd command-line utility for Windows, Mac and Linux
- Steamworks SDK
- Steam mobile apps on iOS and Android
- Steam Servers
- Websites as noted on the Scope section of the program. Subdomains of listed websites are not in scope unless mentioned.
For games developed and published by Valve, if the game is in scope as noted on the Scope section of the program, then we accept reports against the following components:
- Game client and server binaries.
- First-party, unmodified, game servers.
- Game coordinators.
Game bugs, glitches and gameplay exploits are not in scope for the bug bounty program.
No authorization is given to test any other websites, servers, game titles, or mobile applications. No bounties will be given for any disclosures relating to any applications outside the scope of this program.
Exclusions
The following items are considered out-of-scope for all Valve offerings:
- Hypothetical issues that do not have any practical impact. Examples include:
- Vulnerabilities reported by use of automated tools/scanners, without accompanying validation / POC.
- User enumeration without any further impact.
- Clickjacking without a well-defined security/privacy risk.
- Disclosure of software version numbers (we maintain forks of several tools, and apply security patches accordingly).
- Attacks that require social engineering/phishing.
- Attacks that require physical access to the user’s device.
- Attacks that involve the user running malware that then places or modifies content on the target machine, which Steam could later run as the local user.
- However, any case that allows malware or compromised software to perform privilege elevation through Steam, without providing administrative credentials or confirming a UAC dialog, is in scope.
- Additionally, any unauthorized modification of the privileged Steam Client Service is also in scope.
- Open redirects or linkfilter bypasses that cannot be leveraged to programmatically exfiltrate sensitive information (e.g., cookies, OAuth tokens, etc.).
- Content Spoofing / Text Injection that cannot be leveraged for XSS or sensitive data disclosure.
- Host header injection without a specific proof of concept.
- Self XSS, or XSS that only affects out-of-date browsers.
- Denial of Service Attacks.
- Broken links to third party sites.
Additionally, the following items are out-of-scope for issues with Valve games and related components:
- Attacks that only affect or are only triggered in single-player games that are not caused by a previous multiplayer session (e.g., game files or resources downloaded by a game server).
- Reports against Source Engine tools, e.g. Hammer, Source Filmmaker.
- Reports that require the user to open crafted game content: demo files, BSPs, etc not delivered as part of the exploit.
While researching, we'd like to ask you to refrain from:
- Denial of service.
- Spamming.
- Social engineering (including phishing) of Valve staff or contractors.
- Any physical attempts against Valve property or data centers.
Dependencies
Valve services make use of a number of open source and commercial packages. If you discover a vulnerability in a library or OS component, we strongly advise you to follow responsible disclosure procedures directly with the vendor. We will not pay bounties on undisclosed vulnerabilities in dependent components.
Patches to dependent libraries are generally rolled out by our internal change management systems. Reports will not be accepted if they refer to vulnerabilities that have been fixed upstream, and scheduled, but not yet applied to our software or production systems.
We welcome reports that identify Valve systems that have fallen out of date (indicating a problem with our update or change management procedures).
Special Note for Valve Websites
Many Valve websites use a cookie called 'sessionid.' This is used only as an anti CSRF token and is not used for user authentication. Please do not report attacks resulting in leaking the value of this cookie as account takeover vulnerabilities.
Assessing Severity and Rewards
Please carefully review our guidelines for remote-code-execution exploits in Valve games.
IDOR for unreleased applications
We take unintentional leaking of unreleased applications on Steam seriously. If you are reporting an insecure object reference that can leak private details about an unreleased game (name, artwork, pricing, etc.), please make sure your report includes the relevant details for appid 3717370.
If the vulnerability only exists for applications with specific configuration conditions, please carefully describe the configuration as well as the insecure reference. Severity of this type of leak will depend on the type and complexity of the required configuration as well as the scope of any potential exposure.
IDOR for profile data
Insecure object references for information that Steam marks Private are in scope. For non-personally-identifying player data, severity is generally capped at Low.
Remote Code Execution reports - Severity
Remote code execution attacks can be complex to triage and assess. We place a premium on reports that can clearly demonstrate impact to users, and which are faster to technically validate.
Your report must meet the following requirements to be accepted:
- Actual RCE must be demonstrated. Your report should include clear steps that reliably launch another application - e.g. Calculator - on the target machine.
- The payload must be delivered over the network - not loading resource files already on the target computer.
Valve Games: Highest priority
For vulnerabilities in Valve games, the following are our highest priority for assessment, reward, and resolution:
- Exfiltration of sensitive data from a Game Coordinator.
- Client-to-client: malicious payload transmitted from one game client to another when playing peer-to-peer or connected to an unmodified game server.
- Client-to-client: malicious clients that can crash other connected game clients with or without demonstrated RCE behavior.
- Communication from malicious clients that can crash a vanilla dedicated server (i.e. no mods; using only default game assets).
Valve Games: Reduced priority
Reports of the following types may have their severity, and therefore reward, reduced one or more levels from the initial CVSS score:
- Community server-to-client - malicious content including maps and textures, delivered from a community server.
- User interaction required - reports that require victim to execute unusual console commands.
- Client vulnerabilities that cannot be demonstrated against Windows game clients.
Ineligible for Bounty
Reports of any of the following types may be accepted as in-scope, but will not be eligible for a reward:
- Reports that require crafted content (maps, sounds, mods, etc.) delivered via the Steam Workshop.
- Techniques not specifically mentioned above that cause a game-client crash without demonstrated RCE behavior.
- Techniques that require information from the target machine in order to function - for example, returning an address offset in memory in order to craft the payload.
- Techniques that require the game to be run in a non-standard way - for example, with a debugger attached or with unusual startup parameters.
Responsible Disclosure and Guidelines
When submitting potential vulnerabilities, we ask that you follow HackerOne's general guidelines for disclosure as well as the following additional guidelines. A submission that does not meet these requirements may not qualify for a bounty.
- Let us know as soon as possible upon discovery of a potential security issue, and we'll make every effort to quickly resolve the issue.
- Provide us a reasonable amount of time to resolve the issue before any disclosure to the public or a third party.
- Make a good faith effort to avoid privacy violations, destruction of data, and interruption or degradation of our service.
- Only interact with accounts you own or with explicit permission of the account holder.
Valve embraces transparency in our security. We will generally disclose the details of vulnerabilities found, upon request. We will generally permit external discussions of them (such as blog posts), with our permission. We reserve the right to make exceptions to this policy at our discretion.
Please note that we will not consent to disclose reports if they have been marked out-of-scope or inapplicable, or where Valve has not taken a specific corrective action / mitigation.
The Fine Print
You must comply with all applicable laws in connection with your participation in this program. You are also responsible for any applicable taxes associated with any reward you receive.
We may modify the terms of this program or terminate this program at any time. We won’t apply any changes we make to these program terms retroactively.
Valve will have the right to determine CVSS classification, report validity, duplications, exclusions and out-of-scope bugs in its sole discretion.
Reports received through other channels prior to being received through the bug bounty program are not eligible for bounty.