I generally keep my linux install for safe stuff. I'm wary of installing any binaries.
Is Steam a security risk? If so, what can be done about it? Is there a simple way to segregate an area off just for steam games? If so, how? Separate O/S? Chroot?

I only have a laptop and no GPU but... I think this is enough to run Counter-strike1 games.

I currently use Steam on Fedora with SELinux in enforcing mode. Nothing seems to be a problem so far. As for Counter Strike, my T500 (specs in my signature) does NOT run Counter Strike: Source or Condition Zero. Half life runs though. The screen is just black and I can see almost nothing. It runs perfectly fine on my T520.

If you are really worried, perhaps you could run steam in a separate user account? Hope that helps.

Well this is the thing... Steam has cheat protection... sounds a bit like a rootkit to me. Not a big deal to many people but I use Bitcoin on this machine...
there are a lot of hackers in gaming so I can imagine a scenario where Steam / games allows a way in you wouldn't normally get.

SE Linux sounds like a good solution... but I've always found it a bit difficult to setup and then limits/becomes an extra thing to do at kernel upgrade time.

A different user might offer some protection but I don't think it's enough in this instance? Chroot could be better... but I can't see anywhere to download a preconfigured root ubuntu image that I can unpack to my NTFS storage that has space for all this.

Funny thing is the Windows install image is telling me "file not found" when I try to run it after install anyway on Windows now too.

Easy one would be reboot, partition, install a separate O/S just for gaming but I don't want to risk it.
Never easy is it! I just think I won't bother :-)

I do not blame you at all for being extremely security conscious. We do live in such times where this approach is essential.

Another info, I forgot to mention was this - rkhunter does not complain about steam either. So, all in all, I am not too sceptical about steam.

Cheers for the info. Seems I'm not the only one:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410...9071134403593/

My thinking is that I'm giving access to my system that is enough for cheat protection, that'll need rootkit style access. On top of this it's closed source. Probably a good idea to do user separation. I wonder what anyone running a game server I connect t ohas access to. I remember on Windows it wasn't a trivial amount. Might be worth reinstalling to a dedicated gaming account... or even better, a stripped down O/S just for games