'GTA V' Cheat Allows Hackers To Kill You During Single-Player

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There was apparently a new Grand Theft Auto V exploit that allowed other players to kill you during single-player.

As Kotaku reports, last week a Twitch streamer "FriendlyBaron" was notably streaming a GTA V single-player speedrun, when, all of a sudden, his vehicle stopped working and came to a complete stop. And then his player character, as if possessed, exited the vehicle and then just randomly died.



According to FriendlyBaron, who took to Reddit to share what had just happened to him, a modder had previously been harassing him and some friends playing with him. The streamer assumes that the same modder eventually upped the harassment and used hacking and mod tools to kill him during single-player.

It perhaps could have just passed a bizarre bug, but other streamers and players have reported a similar thing happening to them, and the problem/exploit can be traced all the way back to September.

Here's Tex2 -- a Twitter account that covers Rockstar/GTA news and who is a known GTA V data miner -- explaining how it works.


Luckily, not long after word of the exploit started to make the rounds, Rockstar Games patched it.


That said, it's insane to think this exploit ever existed in the first place, though, perhaps it's not surprising given the history of GTA V with hackers. What makes it even more surprising though is is that it took a month for Rockstar Games to fix.

Curious about how such a thing came to be, Kotaku reached out the GTA datamining and modding community, and found out that the exploit has actually been in the game since launch.

Speaking to Kotaku, the aforementioned Tex2 revealed that modders were using in-game tools that were built by Rockstar Games to remotely kill players in the game. Further, they were supposed to serve as an instant way to squash unwanted players for the purposes of events and streaming. These tools were supposed to only be for devs, and for awhile, this was the case. But that recently changed.

Modders were able to get their hands on the tools after a new modding tool allowed them to find players' Social Club ID numbers released. With the ID number, players could use the admin tools to tell the game to kick or kill any specific player they wanted.

The only hurdle was that the targeted player had to be connected to Rockstar Social Club. If they weren't, the command was useless.

As mentioned above, the hack has been addressed. Modders can actually still issue the kill or kick command, but now it does nothing. Whether Rockstar Games has any ways of tracking down the abusers of these tools, who knows. At the time of writing this, the developer hasn't commented on the issue.

Posted:
Related Forum: Grand Theft Auto Forum

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/2018/10/28/gta-v-cheat-hack-kill-single-player/

Comments

"'GTA V' Cheat Allows Hackers To Kill You During Single-Player" :: Login/Create an Account :: 12 comments

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TOXICPosted:

I mean, that's just ridiculous lol, hope this shit don't come to console ffs.

AustinPosted:

This is pretty crazy to read. Never thought that could happen

ChatPosted:

It's halrious to see this, the fact that someone has figured out how to do this and you pretty much can't prevent it as you can't play these games offline due to how steam works, honestly good on who found this. I can understand it being annoying but looking out the window at it, rather funny.

FamousPosted:

See this shit is funny to read and what not. Why can't console have this stuff.

DeftonesPosted:

I don't even know how that manages to get past their AC/security.

THQPosted:

Things like this is why rockstar doesn't like releasing on PC is what I would assume

Shoe-Posted:

Grand theft auto 5 RCE confirmed

JastyPosted:

Jesus this is quite the, hack? glitch..? exploit..? I can't believe this is an option, and hopefully rockstar is doing what they can do to get this fixed because that is pretty brutal.

Mario350Posted:

clearly the speed run would be accepted anyways he had a purple thing on the health/focus metor under the radar and then the insta death which he clearly has installed mods because no way a person can access others offline game without being directly in their pc, either way the dudes speedrun wouldnt be accepted, unless that purple thing was an input overlay

SagePosted:

That is a lot of power to have access to... being able to kill people in a single player lobby through admin access tools is very embarrassing for rockstar