GTA 6 beta ads not what they seem, experts warn

If the hype behind Rockstar Games' upcoming title Grand Theft Auto 6 directly translates into sales numbers, it's set to break every record the gaming industry has ever seen - which is probably why some unfortunate souls recently fell for a scam promising people "beta access" to the upcoming game.

As detailed in a report by SecurityBrief's Kaleah Salmon, researchers at the Romanian cybersecurity company Bitdefender recently announced that several people fell victim to fake ads promising access to GTA 6's beta (which, just so we're clear, has never been officially advertised) for the first 100 people who clicked on them.

The ads ran from the 16th to the 18th of July last month on, of course, Facebook. There doesn't seem to be any concrete numbers regarding exactly how many people fell for the scam, but it does seem that the fake fake adverts were specifically targeted at those within Europe.

According to one of Bitdefender's researchers Andrei Mogage, who willingly opened the ads so they could research their contents, said the advert would direct users towards a Dropbox page. Upon downloading its contents, a fake installer for Grand Theft Auto 6 would run that would actually install malware akin to a "FakeBat loader".

In short, it seems the loader would install a Trojan virus onto people's devices so that the program could scan your computer for financial information.

Bitdefender's researchers also found a website domain listing for the advert, which seemed to be trying to get people to sign up for a Ethereum cryptocurrency scam. Quite literally a scam within a scam. Scamception.

Pretty obvious moral to this story: don't click on Facebook ads, but most certainly do not click on Facebook ads that promise you free stuff.

And for those of you out there hoping to sign up for beta access to GTA 6, it doesn't (nor will it likely ever) exist. Rockstar Games don't really need to offer people beta access to Grand Theft Auto titles as the games sell themselves, but if they did ever announce a beta... they certainly wouldn't do it through a Facebook advert.