INQUISITR.COM / Entertainment

Some ‘GTA V’ Mods Install Malware, Which Ones To Avoid

By Scott Grill
Published on: 08:19 PST, May 14, 2015

The Grand Theft Auto V PC mod scene took an unfortunate turn Thursday when it was discovered that some serve as Trojan Horses to install malware on computers. Only a pair of GTA V mods – Angry Planes and No Clip – have been discovered so far, but there’s a type of mod that everyone should avoid for the time being.

The installed malware was first detected on GTAForum and confirmed by GTA V mod hosting site GTA5-Mods (via PC Gamer).

“The Angry Planes mod was downloaded and run by thousands of people on GTA5-Mods.com and various other community mod hosting sites and forums. It was even featured in Kotaku and PC Gamer!” GTA5-Mods explained. “The mod did exactly what it advertised, however it also spawned a thread that installed malware on your machine behind the scenes. The threat was not picked up by running the.asi file through VirusTotal, which made it difficult to detect before running. This was an extremely sneaky attack, something I can’t say I’ve seen in 12 years of GTA modding.”

It goes without saying that if you’ve installed either the Angry Planes or No Clip mods that you should uninstall them completely and delete any leftover files. Additionally, you should look for a file called “Fade.exe” and run the malware removal software Malwarebytes on your PC. You will also want to change all of your passwords as the malware that came with the mods included a keylogger. One GTAForums user reported that his Steam account has been hijacked, so this is a step you’ll definitely want to take. For future safety, you should avoid GTA V mods that are tools and scripts. These are the only types that can contain malware, according to GTA5-Mods. Script mods in the.lua or.cs formats are safe.

The offending mods have been removed from GTA5-Mods and the site is changing its approval process for those that wish to post mods on the site.

“If you post compiled scripts in.asi,.dll, or.net.dll formats, the approval process will be much lengthier,” it wrote. “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.”

Rockstar Games hasn’t commented on the malware installing mods yet. However, the developer previously explained that mods are not officially supported in the game and urged caution because they could cause problems with GTA V.

Were you affected by one of the Angry Planes or No Clip mods? Sound off in the comments below.

[Image via PC Gamer]

Share this article: Some ‘GTA V’ Mods Install Malware, Which Ones To Avoid
PC Games
More from Inquisitr