Rockstar has released a patch for GTA Online that fixes a security vulnerability (opens in new tab) discovered in January that allowed unscrupulous players to steal other players' in-game money, reset account progress, and even They can now "corrupt" accounts in such a way that they are effectively banned.

This alone is bad enough, but it could have been just the tip of the iceberg. Speyedr, the creator of an unofficial firewall (opens in new tab) mod for GTA5 aimed at protecting players from hackers, predicts that this vulnerability will eventually allow remote code execution, allowing hackers to execute malware on the PC on which the game is played He predicts that this will be the case.

Rockstar acknowledged the issue (opens in new tab) shortly after it was reported and said it aims to address it in a "security-related title update."

That update is now available, and while the patch notes do not provide details, it is clearly aimed at addressing this exploit.

Patch notes provided by Rockstar Support (opens in new tab):

"Will it work?" The general consensus seems to be "hopefully." players in the "GTA Online" subreddit (opens in new tab) have so far So far, there have been no reports of unexpected catastrophes. Rockstar reporter Tez2, who filed the initial report on the vulnerability, had a "good news, bad news" reaction to the patch notes.

"In terms of remote exploits, we should be safe now," he replied on Twitter when asked if the patch fixed the problem.

"As far as regular cheaters, not so much. You'll still face them in the public lobbies, but at least in the invite-only lobbies cheaters shouldn't bother you."

Unfortunately, Speyedr warns that this fix means that current and older versions of his mod will only work in "solo session" mode. However, that fix should be in place soon.

"R* doesn't usually mess with netcode, but this makes sense," tweeted Speyedr (opens in new tab)." I will look into this ASAP and get the heuristics working again." "If all goes well, I will bundle it with 3.1.0b6."

We will keep a close eye on the subreddit to see how this patch turns out. We have also contacted Rockstar for more information on the patch and will update if we hear back.