The two biggest hacks in the CS:GO skin market came in the summer of 2022: in June, a collector's inventory worth more than $2 million was stolen, and in August hackers hit one of the large third-party trading platforms and pulled out skins worth over $1.5 million. Knowing about such cases is useful beyond curiosity: even if your inventory is worth far less, nobody wants to lose items they earned fairly. Below are the details of both incidents and the rules that help keep your skins safe.
Skin theft has existed as long as the Steam trading platform itself, and the developers keep trying to fight it. It was to protect users that the trade lock was introduced, which made you wait a week before you could sell an item you received. Measures like this, however, are often not enough.
A $2 million inventory
At the end of June 2022, reports emerged of an incident in which an inventory worth more than $2 million in total was stolen. According to the trader known as ohnePixel, it included seven Souvenir AWP | Dragon Lore skins and some of the rarest Karambits, including the so-called #1 Blue Gem Karambit, valued at more than a million dollars at the time. How the hackers gained access to the account is unknown. HFB, the owner of the inventory, reportedly had not logged in for several years, which may be why the hacker was able to take over the account and sell the skins to other users.
Shortly after the theft became public, Valve reversed the hacker's trades and all items went back to the owner's account. The people who lost out were those who had bought the skins without knowing they were stolen: they paid serious money and ended up without the skins. Buyers who had used large third-party platforms came out without losses, since those platforms eventually refunded them.
A trading platform hack
Another case followed in August 2022, and this time the target was not a single collector but one of the large third-party trading platforms. On August 13, a screenshot appeared on Twitter listing the accounts that received stolen skins worth more than one and a half million dollars in total. Alongside the main attack, the hackers tried to divert attention by sending trade offers to large skin holders. The assumed goal was to make it harder for Valve to separate legitimate trades from fraudulent ones.
As a result, the service had to suspend trading. At the time of publication it was unclear whether the stolen skins would be recovered; the platform announced a reward for any information about the hack.
Finally, here are the basic rules that help keep your inventory safe (more in our guide on how to protect your inventory from scammers):
use the mobile authenticator and watch which sites you sign in to through Steam so you don't fall for phishing; never share your API key with anyone (see what a Steam API scam is);
check the contents of every trade offer you receive;
use large marketplaces such as LIS-SKINS: they offer a wide range of skins and also take care of user security;
read the trading rules carefully and don't hesitate to contact support if you have doubts, for example if someone messages you claiming to be us.
Since July 2025, CS2 has had Trade Protection: any trade can be reversed within 7 days through your Steam trade history, and the received items stay locked for that period.
