GTA Online Bug exploited to ban and corrupt players’ accounts

Grand Theft Auto Online (GTA). Players online report that they have lost game progress and in-game currency, as well as being blocked from the servers because of an alleged vulnerability in Grand Theft Auto’s PC version.

GTA Online, the online multiplayer version of Rockstar Games’ action-adventure series is originally released October 2013. New content was added through free title updates.

According to reports, the “remote execution” vulnerability was exploited by the cheat developer for ‘North’ Grand Theft Auto V. This allowed the cheater to alter player’s account attributes remotely (such as zeroing their money balance), corrupt accounts and ban them from the game.

User reports indicate that the exploit could affect players who are not part of the same multiplayer lobby with the attackers. Therefore, anyone online is vulnerable to attack.

BleepingComputer has seen a changelog that the North GTA Online cheat developers added these features as part of 2.0.0.

The alleged vulnerability was identified and assigned a CVE. It is currently being monitored under .

These abusive features were removed by the North GTA Online cheat on January 21st. He apologized for any inconvenience caused.

A changelog for North cheat states that “Removed corrupt/badsport account for players” (bad judgment on my part for including this public).

“Removed player take money (bad judgment on my part).

The reversal is unfortunately too late as many gamers have already been affected by the problem.

The Rockstar Games support forums were with user reports alleging that they have had account issues since the release of the cheat.

It is not safe to use a PC

Rockstar Games is yet to make an announcement about the matter, but developers and others in the space have claimed that the exploit was a partial remote code execution flaw. This could allow for the hacking of GTA Online accounts as well as the security of Rockstar Games’ computer.

If your computer is affected by the RCE exploit, this is what it will look like. You’ll be stuck online indefinitely if you try to access your account.

AVOID GTAO ON PC RIGHT NOW

Floorball (@Fluuffball).

Tez2, a Twitter user who closely monitors Rockstar Games’ activities, users should not use a firewall to play the game, or, even better, stop playing it altogether.

Temporary solutions for accounts corrupted by viruses are as simple as deleting the folder “Rockstar Games” from your Windows Documents folder. Then, reload the game and refresh the profile data.

BleepingComputer is not a testing organization for this method. Please use it at your own risk.

Speyedr is the creator of the GTA V firewall program ‘Guardian’ and has stated that hackers are about to find a remote code execution path for newly discovered exploits.

Speyer cautioned that Guardian must be set up correctly in order to prevent the exploit. He also recommends that Windows users refrain from playing the game until it is corrected.

“Just to assure everyone–Guardian still functions, and this exploit doesn’t somehow bypass Guardian,” .

However, there is a high chance that any user, especially beginners will set up Guardian in an incorrect way to protect themselves.

BleepingComputer reached out to Rockstar Games for comment, but is still waiting to hear from them.

It is best to not launch the game on PC until Rockstar Games has fixed the issue. This applies especially to those who have made significant progress and have invested a great deal of money.