Grand Theft Auto (GTA) Online players have complained of lost game progress, stolen in-game money, and bans from game servers because of a supposedly vulnerable area in the PC version of the game.
The developer of the ‘North’ Grand Theft Auto V hack, according to BleepingComputer, exploited a new “remote code execution” vulnerability in the PC game client to remotely change player account attributes (such as zeroing their money balance), corrupt accounts, and even ban users from the game.
GTA Online is a multiplayer version of the well-known action-adventure game franchise from Rockstar Games that receives free updates since its initial release in October 2013.
According to the report, the North GTA Online cheat developer included these new features on January 20 as part of its 2.0.0 version.
On January 21, however, the developer apologized for the damage these abusive features had caused and removed them.
The North cheat’s changelog stated that it had “Removed bad sport/corrupt account for players (bad judgement on my part for adding this public).”
Removed remove money from player ((bad judgement on my part for adding this public),” it continued.
However, the move came too late, as many players had already been affected.
The Rockstar Games support forum has been inundated with user reports of account troubles since the cheat’s publication, per the claim.