By what issue was this epiphany given cause to arise?
Comment has been collapsed.
Misinformation, especially that of malicious intent, is indeed aggravating.
Comment has been collapsed.
MrBacon stop spamming and stop writing in italic.
Comment has been collapsed.
Ok i will be the one who says it, if someone has a key that needs checking post it here
Comment has been collapsed.
Steam must make a "Key Tester" or something like that... where you can know everything about that key.
Game, Used, Valid, etc....
Comment has been collapsed.
They can brute force even now, but they don't know what they can get.
Comment has been collapsed.
The problem being that after a few (5?) incorrect attempts, the system locks you out for a time (15 minutes?). I've done it once accidentally when someone tried to give me a key they hand-typed instead of copied. When I realized what happen I went over and got the key from their computer myself.
Comment has been collapsed.
Something to detect people trying random "keys" over and over again and ban em' from "Key Tester" system.
Comment has been collapsed.
Are you serious... keys are alphanumeric.
That means there are 221073919720733357899776 (36^15) possible steam codes.
You have no way to know which have been assigned at all, used, etc - plus you don't know what they would be for.
You gonna brute force that?
(By the way, if you were able to try 1000000 keys per hour, it would still take you 25236 BILLION years to try them all. Have fun!)
Comment has been collapsed.
how did you get this number?
did you factor in that there are different key formats?
there are even keys without dashes (GT legends) or 3-3-3 keys (SMNC early access)
Comment has been collapsed.
Well then there are even more keys :P
The number is alphanumeric probability: 36 (alphabet + 0-9) to the power of 15 (length of code).
Comment has been collapsed.
Did you miss the part that trying them all would take 25236 billion years? If you had every person on earth (7 billion) try 1 million keys per hour, it would take 3605 Billion years to scan them all.
This is assuming BILLIONS of users, and that they could somehow try a million keys every hour, 24/7.
With this logic, why not just brute force credit card numbers? CCs have much less variation since they are numeric rather than alphanumeric. Also, a valid CC is more valuable than a random Steam key.
The reason thieves use phishing rather than brute force is because there are just too many possibilities. Even CCs that have the standard 16 digits + 3 digits on the back would have 6131066257801 different possibilities. It would take almost a millennial to scan them all (again, at 1 million per hour - which is likely impossible).
Comment has been collapsed.
Well, sometimes it doesn't say you own the game. Sometimes it simply says you activated the game (even when you have it), and makes the key unusable.
I saw it happen to my brother
Comment has been collapsed.
If Steam had that feature everyone would bot the shit out of Steam so you can end up having a ton of random generated keys that other people have bought. Don't say it is impossible, if you get the calculations right you might get some keys :P
Comment has been collapsed.
Read my post a few posts up about probabilities of success with brute force.
Comment has been collapsed.
272 Comments - Last post 36 minutes ago by osztihun
9 Comments - Last post 3 hours ago by WhiteBearPooh
381 Comments - Last post 7 hours ago by gilbygamer
324 Comments - Last post 7 hours ago by gilbygamer
267 Comments - Last post 8 hours ago by krol7
522 Comments - Last post 9 hours ago by himalaya
599 Comments - Last post 9 hours ago by himalaya
82 Comments - Last post 2 minutes ago by jealex5
36 Comments - Last post 4 minutes ago by brsichetti
5 Comments - Last post 7 minutes ago by Ev4Gr33n
5 Comments - Last post 15 minutes ago by Momo1991
61 Comments - Last post 25 minutes ago by faelynaris
85 Comments - Last post 47 minutes ago by NekroNoob
93 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by MarvashMagalli
You can't check if a key is used or not. It will just say you own the game, not if it's valid or duplicate. Stop saying you can check keys or eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelse
i make you suffer
Comment has been collapsed.