Beware: popular GTA V mods installing malware on users’ PCs

By Kris Wouk May 15, 2015

GTA Whale MOD — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Sure, Grand Theft Auto V is plenty of fun on its own, but once you’ve mastered everything, what’s the next frontier? If you’re playing the game on the PC, the answer is simple: install a few mods. Be careful what you click though, as some gamers have found out the hard way that some mods are being used to infect users’ PCs.

It all started when a user on the site GTAForums noticed some strange activity when running a routine check of what processes were running on their computer. Eventually the user tracked down the suspicious activity to Fade.exe, which had hijacked another file and was using it to connect to the Internet.

More investigation and a Malwarebytes scan revealed that the program in question was actually a keylogger. The culprit turned out to be the popular GTA V mod Angry Planes, which spawns, well, angry planes that incessantly hunt down the player.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming

To double check, the user removed Fade.exe and the other files that it spawned while running, then loaded up GTA V with the Angry Planes mod and watched as the process once again popped into existence. Other users quickly began to do their own testing and confirmed the mod did indeed contain the malware.

Users also identified another mod, No Clip, that had been installing the same malware. In response, popular site GTA5-Mods.com plans to “beef up the approval process on these kinds of scripts.”

“If you post compiled scripts in .asi, .dll, or .net.dll formats, the approval process will be much lengthier,” a post on the site explains. “We recommend avoiding these formats completely and publishing your mods as .lua or .cs source files, these kinds of scripts will be approved very quickly because the source can be verified.”

For more information on how to check if your system is infected, see the post on GTAForums. In the meantime, you may want to be extra careful when installing mods, whether for Grand Theft Auto V or other games.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Kris Wouk is a tech writer, gadget reviewer, blogger, and whatever it's called when someone makes videos for the web. In his…

Gaming

Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer: when it’s coming and how to watch

A man drives away in a boat with stolen money in Grand Theft Auto 5 art.

Rockstar has confirmed exactly when it will drop the first trailer for the next mainline Grand Theft Auto game. It has been over a decade since the launch of Grand Theft Auto V, so excitement and hype surrounding the next GTA installment is at an all-time high. The release of Grand Theft Auto 6 Trailer 1 will be the biggest game reveal of 2023, so you don't want to miss it. Here's everything we know about when it'll air and how you can watch it.

When will Rockstar post GTA 6 Trailer 1?
Rockstar has confirmed that it will post "Trailer 1" for the next GTA game at 9 a.m. ET/6 a.m. PT on December 5. Make sure you don't oversleep Tuesday morning if you want to see the trailer right when it drops.
How to watch GTA 6 Trailer 1
Watch Trailer 1: Tuesday, December 5 at 9AM ET

Gaming

We need to see these 3 things in Grand Theft Auto 6’s first trailer

gta 6 first trailer speculation v

It’s almost time. After over a decade of waiting, we’ll finally get our first look at the next Grand Theft Auto game sometime this December. When it arrives, the Grand Theft Auto 6 reveal will be one of the biggest video game industry announcements of the year, regardless of what Rockstar Games shows. Despite that, there are specific things that the GTA 6 reveal trailer needs to tell us to live up to its hype.

Although Rockstar has said little about the project before now, GTA 6 might be one of the most anticipated games ever, and it’s following up one of the most successful individual video games of all time. Speculation on where this game will be set, what it will be about, and what innovations it will bring to the medium have been rampant for years. I know this because I’ve played a part in this hype cycle myself -- and this very article is adding to it right now.

Gaming

Grand Theft Auto 6 is getting its first trailer sooner than you think

Trevor firing an assault rifle in GTA 5.

After a decades-long wait, Grand Theft Auto 6 is finally making its formal debut. Rockstar announced that the first trailer for the anticipated open-world game will drop in early December.

It's no stretch to call Grand Theft Auto 6 the most anticipated video game of all time. It's been 10 years since the mega-successful Grand Theft Auto 5 launched and fans have been itching for news on a sequel since. That impatience boiled over last year when Rockstar suffered a major security breach that saw early footage from the game leaking. Now the studio is finally ready to reveal the game on its own terms.