Among the games that you can get via Steam’s ongoing pseudo Lunar New Year sale is GTA V, that’s assuming you didn’t already claim it for free via the Epic Games Store all those moons ago. In addition to its singleplayer component, its online counterpart, GTA Online, is pretty lively as live-service games go. But for now, it’s probably a good idea do avoid that particular game.
Twitter account @TezFunz, which primarily shares posts related to Rockstar Games titles, has claimed that GTA Online has security vulnerabilities that hackers are now actively exploiting. This allows the bad actors to remotely modify your stats as well as permanently corrupt your account. Which is not ideal to say the very least.
Rockstar is aware and have been logging any affected account before the first mod menu started abusing the new exploits.#GTAOnline https://t.co/eDtVrOGXQn
— Tez2 (@TezFunz2) January 21, 2023
Another Twitter user, @Speyedr_AU, who has made a custom firewall tool for GTA V, explains that the exploit involves remote memory allocation. But they also say that “it won’t be very long” before someone manages to run remote code execution using the exploit. Which means that, rather than just losing the ability to play the game, you may get your entire system infected too.
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With that in mind, while they have made the custom firewall tool called Guardian, they have also temporarily removed the GitHub repo for it. They claim that they don’t want people risking it, and end up installing Guardian incorrectly and getting infected anyway. In other words, it’s probably better to play something else that’s not GTA V while waiting for the exploit to be fixed.
It's technically remote memory allocation, but it won't be very long before someone figures a way to get that memory to execute as code. It's really really really bad.
— Speyedr (@Speyedr_AU) January 21, 2023
For what it’s worth, Rockstar Games is already aware of the issue, and are currently tracking accounts that may be affected. Though if you happen to be an unlucky victim, you’ll still have to submit a support ticket manually. The company has also not yet provided a date on which it expects this to be fixed.
(Source: @TezFunz2, @Speyedr_AU)
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