DNS Codes: GTA Online's Most Infamous Exploit 

Wow, $70 Billion! That's enough to buy three new cars in modern GTA Online.

The best era of GTA Online. Your only worry was a rhino tank and a military jet which required effort breaking into the military base to acquire. Grinding rooftop rumble. Everything’s changed

Step 1:get bounty Step 2: go into a private session Step 3: wait 45 minutes Step 4: shopping spree

I thinks it's fun to think about that even the most succesful and talented studio in the world had no idea how to make a multiplayer game. Sure IV had multiplayer but the scale and ambitions for GTAO was almost a impossible task for Rockstar.

The funny part is rockstar fixes money glitches in seconds but avoid fixing glitches that is unplayable.

I remember being like 11/12 playing GTA Online and seeing all of the SP TO MP modded car glitch videos. Good times.

I was there when it happened, and it was just crazy. It happened around Christmas IIRC and it felt like a gift from Santa.

I remember this whole situation. I never was a victim of this but I know a few people who had their accounts reset completely when they got the money. Kinda unfair since they didn't go and seek it out as far as I know but if Rockstar didn't give them all resets, it would still lead to a massive power imbalance between players whether those players liked it or not.

I never messed with these codes, but I once killed a random guy with a bounty and got a few millionss for it. That's how I got my Eclipse apartment, my Adder and some more stuff. I didn't even abuse it that much, i just let the money sit there and Rockstar took it away.

It is weird looking back at this because back then no DLC's had come out. Heists weren't even a thing yet. The most expensive thing in the game was the Adder and it was 1million and you could only own ONE apartment. The 10 million jet didn't even exist yet. There was all this money and nothing to spend it on. If they never got rid of everyone's money I would still have hundreds of millions today and would still own everything in game

I can honestly say I remember years ago someone in a lobby just dumping thousands in cash on the floor and it's always puzzled me since and now I know. Thank you, great video 👌🏻

Remember i used dns code on ps3 back then, i call this nostalgia

I was working on a video about this same topic over the past month or so, I finally put my video out and then found out about yours. Gonna be honest, yours is better. Good job!

Absolutely wild to think that this was already over a decade ago lol. With GTA 6 announced now, I wonder if Rockstar will have similar mistakes in the early days of its online, or if they've learned from the past.

Those were honestly the best memories I had in GTAO. At the time, I thought it was only modded lobbies, but they were everywhere. I remember walking into Ponsonbys and a couple seconds later I had a +400 million dollar bounty placed on me. Almost half of the lobby came after me. Later, I had killed one who had a 100 mil bounty and you bet I bought every item available.

Good times. I remember getting 500mil and instead of getting banned they took my money away but wasn't broke due to a garage full of adders

I remember this. Then a few years later, the “10k Per Kill” modded captures came out with the Doomsday Update. I managed to buy the Bunker, Facility and Mk1 Oppressor because of that glitch 😂

this was the golden era, gta online will never be as fun as this again

I remember this back in the PS3 days. Someone set a bounty of around $2 billion or so on a player, I was able to find them in the lobby and killed them to claim the bounty. EVERYONE who had a microphone on in the lobby was like "Yoo, let me get some of that!", since this was a period where you could easily gift money to players. I told everyone "I gotcha, I've got ya'll covered." *I immediately left the lobby on purpose.* Good times.

I still remember this like it was yesterday

Your channel is amazing, keep up the good work

i got gta 5 for christmas that year but didn’t start playing online until around new years (my crew was made bang on new year’s day 2014 so it could be then??) and i remember one of my friends from school having literally every vehicle because of it. we used to get him to spawn a rhino and then leave the game when one of us gets in so that we could go terrorise the map lmao

Does anyone else feel like GTA 5's newer content just feels like stuff that's not worthy of GTA 6?

It was the best era of GTA Online. Everyone was having fun. You did missions to have fun not because you needed to grind for the money. After they took everyone's money that's when I got into the money glitches. It was such a a fun era and in my opinion GTA online was dead before heists came out. I still play but nothing compares to 2013-2014.

man i remember everybody was asking for a dns server, good video!!!

I still remember these days like it was yesterday. People were buying the dumbest shit, like dump trucks and just customizing random cars like Asters and the old cadillacs. Then the Rhinos came and it was either you were a tank sniper or tank goofball.

Than god someone made video on this era. A lot of new people wonder how this and the race around this prison was the fastest way to unlock everything.

I remember back in the day playing GTA Online on my PS3 when a dude was given a 200 billion or so bounty. He was hiding in one of the gas stations outside the city, he had a ton of people in the lobby going after him, I got to him by pushing the door open with shots, got a couple lucky hits and became a millionaire, I was stoked af since a ton of people in the lobby were hunting this guy, and weirdly enough, it was the only time I saw someone post as huge of a bounty as that was. One of my best memories from GTA Online in console, then when it blew up again in PC during the pandemic I played legitimately, no mod menus or anything even though cheating is rampant, grinded the casino and all other heists, and businesses

Cool video, I remember all of this craziness happening back then. The estimate you give based on the 65k users on the one DNS is pretty flawed. There were thousands of DNS and thousands of users but it was most likely the same users across many of the DNS codes. It's also unlikely every DNS code was anywhere near that used.

The best part of this was, if someone set u a really high bounty you could go into an invite only and survive the bounty and get paid!

I literally just got back into gta5, and this was the one glitch that i was remembering lol. This was a really insane time.

I remember, I was like a Month early on the whole thing. I used to browse the web and RU-vid for glitches daily. By random, I found some guy with like 20-30 subs on his RU-vid and he made a tutorial Video on how to set up your own virtual DNS Server. That was some craaazy stuff experiencing this for the first time. I remember cranking up the Money multiplier so hard at first, I already got like a billion for robbing a store. Was so hyped to surprise my friends when I robbed a store and giving it to them with the cash share feature. Had people asking me daily to share them some fat cash. Putting a 1 billion bounty on someone we used to hate in a public lobby. Then after around a Month, public DNS became more and more a thing. The ending phase was a MESS. Everyone throwing around billions, in god mode and whatnot until rockstar wiped the whole thing. I initially received 80 Days in cheater lobby. After around 14 Days, it was reduced to 8 Days. Wild time for sure 🤣

Hope to see you make great GTA VI content as well when it comes out

Man, this was a fun time lol, I vividly remember struggling to make money and wanting the adder sooo bad then literally a week later I was able to change the dns code and get anything I ever wanted lol. Still have the Pegasus vehicles I bought back then but never really use them

Another top Qualify video Yo Jaaatro (Jaat cuz im in Brampton rn)

Stellar video as always!

I love to see videos like this some history of gta online

i remember these days, my friend said someone put a 200 million bounty on him and told me to go to a private session so i could claim it, then after that i bought everything like clothes, pegasus vehicles, and even tho i was just rank 12, there was also a glitch that unlocks everything thats locked until youre like rank 50 or soemthing

I remember December 2013 vividly. There was no way to buy shark cards at that time. Me and my friends would quit out of the game as soon as we got those massive bounties and go to invite only lobbies to share the wealth amongst each other. Good times

As a software engineer, hearing this referred to as "DNS codes" makes me giggle a little. All you're really doing is configuring your system to use someone else's DNS server, who has a different idea of what the Rockstar web server address is, and because Rockstar wasn't using HTTPS, anyone could impersonate that website. You could have set this up on your home network really easily, as long as you could run a web server and add a static DNS entry on your router.

Having a bounty set on you for 1 Billion dollars and watch the whole lobby go crazy was one of the best experiences I had in gta. There wasn’t all these crazy vehicles with missles that are everywhere now. My brothers and I would set bounties on each other for the thrill of the chase of the entire lobby coming after you. Same with the old armored money trucks. Times flies man

Been around since the beginning I remember all of this, there has been a plethora of insane money glitches but this one definitely takes the cake. I remember getting a $97 million bounty put on me. I raced to my apartment and sat for an hour meanwhile outside my apartment looked like the midnight release for gtaV. 😂 I also still have all those original pegasus vehicles. Well, the ones I wanted anyway then they took all the money but like you said it didn’t matter. Ahhh the good old days. Still have my original account and I don’t know how when I look at my stats. My honest opinion is some of us older profiles got a pass because it’s impossible for them to detect the ill gotten gains over the years. I am still selling off garages of mk1 oppressors for 2.2 million a pop from a director mode glitch from probly close to 5 yrs ago. During the easy dupe days I also duped all my expensive super cars and sold the originals. And any i have bought since those days I replace whenever I can though the winnable vehicles essentially giving me a whole bunch of money back. Should do a list of the top 5 most profitable glitches in gtav history. I’d have to say the director mode glitch was probly #2 next to the dns codes.

I remember hearing that Rockstar was going to shut down everything to do the cash cleaning. Buying anything value you could to sell at a later date

That 200 million dollar bounty sounds really fun for all the people involved, how to make a John Wick movie with no money. To balance it, have the victim get some of the money every minute at least, just like Hot Property I had this idea for getting paid for heists that Lester would send you to a slot machine that would "malfunction" at the perfect moment and give you your payout, a guaranteed horse on the Inside Track, or a Free Roam version of Fleeca (Which already happens with a Terrorbyte job) that had an unusual drop that morning

When the Gifting money practice was going on, I'd take out someone with a Bounty, then turn around and give it back to them. But I noticed they Ended the Gifting money practice some time ago.

I probably should not have been playing this game at 10 years old, but the Christmastime 2013 vibes of GTA Online are unmatched. I still remember getting all those millions and buying a dump truck, Z-type, Adder, etc. I remember when there was snow on the ground on Christmas and I was rolling around with this random guy in an Adder and we were doing deathmatches. Of course, I also remember getting the warning that Rockstar was going to be removing the ill-gotten gains (huh, maybe that's why they named that DLC that), so I bought all of the extra things I wanted. There was certainly a shift in the air when this game came out that I think a lot of us can relate to. I feel so old being nostalgic for this time, but, hey, it's alright. To anybody reading this, we probably crossed paths once in the online techno-sphere, so hello again. Thanks for growing up with me.

I remember doing this back in the day. What people don’t know is that modders would do the reverse of this too. When rockstar warned players that it would ban anyone with unrealistic in game balances totaling trillions of dollars, panic started to settle in. So modders would make it that a haircut would cost one billion dollars or even more. I did that and when the first ban wave happened I was given a warning and got to keep around 200 million bucks. Good times

also remember the cheatengine car sell method, which still worked just a few years ago. you could just get a car from the street, go into ls customs, modify it and search for the sell value in cheat engine, and then change it to max 2 billion per car. if you hit sell, the game crashed but after rebooting you still got the money. same worked for rp also. i still have multiple accounts with multiple billions cash from that method, not a single one got banned

What's funny to me is that I would still rather play in that state of the game because the only thing you would have to worry about was the rhino tank and a lazer jet. Which at the time were not purchasable, so you had to go into the military base and still one.

Sooo, what about the DNS codes that literally gave you a mod menu? I remembered using that one, but I started playing later than the original DNS codes

Old Gen was the best time! Million+ dollar bounties was the most fun… Whole lobby in a giant car chase was exciting and over the top action. I’d forgotten the term “Adder Bonds”, but that was the go to before the Panto.

Aww, i miss those dns codes - it was a crazy time when it felt like anything was possible..

I remember I got money from a random and me, and my brother were both playing at the same time. We immediately bought all the Pegasus vehicles. All of the clothing. One of every car we liked. Heard the band wave was coming, so we opted to ask for a ticket to restore original levels. All the Pegasus vehicles were removed all the clothes was removed from our inventory. We kept all the cars in the garages. Kept all our properties. Fun times

I wasnt really playing during that time, i got to be part of the "glitching frenzy" that happened afterwards during the business update an the highlife update, all you needed was your own custom plate an you were a billionaire...

You should make a video about the time modders exploited vehicle insurance to empty other players wallets on gta online pc, i still remember to this day how i was terrified of playing the game and losing everything.

I was 13 and made a lot of really fond memories during the DNS war.

The nostalgia hit just from hearing se7ensins is crazy

This is crazy af!!! Finally a documentary, sorta of how this happened. I remember getting millions by random players but I wasn’t clever enough to fill my garages. So I lost everything. Fast forward 10 years later and I have 120 million dollars, legitimately, and rank 900. I can’t believe I still play this game almost every day. Great video man.

I remember in patch 1.10 you could still bring vehicles over from Story mode. Made a fully optioned Karen Rebel and Vapid Sadler.

Ah yes, I was here for this. It was so strange but really fun. Managed to get one of these and my friends reported me for it as if I caused the money thing myself. Didn't get banned though. Just enjoyed what I bought and sadly had it all taken away shortly before the heists came out.

Sad that I wasn't around for this as I first played GTA: Online around March or April 2014. But, this sounds like it was a pretty fun time ngl.

This was a crazy time. Seeing this as a decade ago makes me feel really old.

Interestingly i believe a side effect of this getting patched is certain regions (ip ranges) just fail to connect to gta online at all

i remember during this time the money drops people were doing at the helipad near the recycling plant near the airport. good times lol

I remember a really weird glitch i had on 360. When my player tried to leave the elevator in the garage, the elevator would explode and my game would freeze lol. Good times

It was a while after the codes were patched, but i remember getting 25m out of nowhere from some player when the "money sharing" feature was still available. Safe to say that i treated myself nicely after that. (Just like everyone else)

i remember getting money dropped on me by random hackers in pretty much every lobby. After 11 years of buying every new piece of overpriced additional content, it finally ran out and I'm just now learning how miserable of an experience grinding in online is

Still have a garage full of Adders from 2013, idk why I never sold them but at this point I’m never touching them. Kind of like a token of the time now, even if I’m the only person who knows when I got them lol.

I played back then. I wasn't aware of this exploit. The worst I had seen from it was a $1M bounty, but figured it were some cheaters doing it.

I remember using this to unlock the Hijak khameleon or whatever, the Carbon RS bike and the little hot rod car. They persisted even after turning all this stuff off lol

Canada's ISP'S at the time had horrendous protection and I had my twitter account hacked when I changed my DNS

remember like it was yesterday. that whole month i was like the hood santa claus no bs. blessing everyone with billions.

I remember these lobbies. I remember someone put one of those crazy bounties on me and the whole lobby chased me in jets and helicopters. I remember using the money I got and upgrading street cars so people could sell them and make money because I didn’t host the lobby and yes people could sell street cars you customized back then as long as you didn’t own them.

These were the days man. We did this and I got to like level 500 with 5 billion and woke up on christmas day and my character had like -50000000 xp but I still got to keep half my money

Man i spend one full night with friends doing the duplicate car glitch to buy the hydra. What a time, on xbox 360

Never gonna forget being 10 years old getting banned for DNS codes, but the loading screen would just say you got disconnected, so I started troubleshooting until I found a reddit thread that said to delete your character because it could be corrupted so I did... but I was banned so it didn't fix anything. I like to think they never wiped the account I deleted so I could've been set for my entire GTA Online lifetime if I had been a smarter kid.

Me and my friends stopped playing for months when we got our money taken. We still talk about it to this day though.

December 2013, the first time they added snow and we discovered DNS Codes. They changed the money value and gave you tons of loot. Me and my friends would rob gas stations like crazy and raced to see who could get to one trillion dollars first. We purchased everything we wanted, all the clothes, all the guns, everything! I remember stealing a random car and upgrading to the max without insurance and tracking because we had unlimited money. The only thing that ruined the glitch is after the patch all money was taken away. Prior to the glitch I had roughly 6 million. During the early game cycle that was a literal ton of money. So following the patch we were devastated and had to sell the stuff we bought. Good times! Wish I could go back and play with all my old friends.

Great video

Hah that's my post from 2015! To be clear it WAS glorious! They hadn't nerfed the Tank yet either...

A video about the modded 10k per kill job's in 2017 would interesting too.

I still have an account from ps3 days merged to pc with 12 maxed out adders, keeping it for emergency.

This video just reminded me of when this was a thing and I was doing it bro I was one of the people who filled up my garage with adder because ik it was coming but never logged into that acc until now and crazy to say I still have evrething what a history have we lived

The bounty thing happened to me on PS3, i had no idea what happened until now

I'm still living off deluxo bonds from when I modded back in 2018. Still got around 80 mil worth left, but I've been diversifying my income so i don't have to fip into them. It's a really power play to have an entire CEO garage full of them

6:25 nice i appreciate you featuring my comment i made a while ago on another channel.

Funnily enough I was playing GTA online at the time (on xbox 360), and I remember being in all these weird lobbies with friends, we all never got money but I do still remember this shit happening to other people lol

Good times :D I first used it at lv 30 something and after everything got reset I was still in the 400s with all the stuff available at the time.

My first major wealth in GTA Online was a friend receiving a 2.2 billion bounty, killing him and giving him half back. Now I know how it was done, thumbs up :)

I only started playing the game a couple years back, maybe 3 years. I tried GTA online for about 15 minutes back then and thought, "this would be great. I can continue playing after finishing story mode." Then as a level one player, trying to figure out what I was doing, I was standing still and looking at my map when I got killed by a bunch of missiles that seemingly came out of nowhere. "That was crazy, what happened?". I respawned and maybe 1 minute later, it happened again. But this time, I saw that it showed the name of the player that killed you (all I remember at this time is, it was some kind of immature name that only a young teenage boy would make). The same player tracked me down and killed me again while I was standing still and looking at my pause menu. So I decided to look for him and see if I could send him a message and ask him to help me figure things out, or leave me alone so I can figure them out myself. That was when I noticed I was level one and he was a much higher level. Not only that, there were lots of other players in the game with me that were so much higher leveled. It was kind of hopeless at that point. I thought, "how am I ever going to get to level 400 when I can't even get a mile from my spawn point without being annihilated by some child who has nothing but spare time to keep playing the game and getting better while I am going to work every day, taking care of children and only having an hour or two to play on only some evenings?". I logged off and thought, "nah, unfortunately I won't be able to play it" and didn't touch it again for a year or more, but I replayed story mode over and over about 8 times. I got pretty good at the game and decided to try online again and bought the criminal enterprise starter pack. I got some money to start with and bought a few weapons, that was when I noticed how much more expensive things were in online. I got an apartment and was able to safely go through the pause menu and options from there. I actually made some progress, I got to level 7 with only getting "griefed" a couple times. I learned to change servers and I learned there was a passive mode. Then I finally noticed "invite only server". This was maybe 3 or 4 months ago. That was when I finally became able to play the game. But as I'm playing and learning more, I learn about the glitches, the modded accounts and other abuses that destroyed the game's economy and made it into the sh*t show it is today. I finally realized, there is nothing you can do to play without being affected by those damned griefers, hackers and cheaters

If you truly remember this time, you knew it was bad because the most expensive thing at the time was the adder for 1 million

Just found the channel, watched 3 videos straight

Do more videos like this and i heard about this but never knew until mad long ago

Im so sad that I never knew about this back then...

I never directly used a code but someone in my lobby who had a bounty must have. I'll never forget killing a guy and getting 2 billion as the reward. I bought every pegasus vehicle filled up my garages with cars and would even customize street cars for my friends to sell (no longer possible). My money got reset to 500k. It's actually crazy to think GTA survived past this considering how wrecked the economy could have been.

This video was a nostalgic journey. R* even “repoed” some of my cars and “seized” my bank account.

In my notes app I have a note from 2013 with DNS codes. What a good time

I remember when I did this glitch with my friends. We bought everything in the game, clothes, cars, apartments… 2 of my friends were banned but the rest including myself were clear. After Rockstar patched the only thing they removed from my account was the money in the bank and the account level. But the rest stayed the same. Good times

Nostalgia check

This is virtually still a thing on PC. It's hard to be in a public lobby without someone 'gifting' you stuff by spawning all collectables and high end /rare cars. If you want to play legit, you cannot play online on the PC. It ruins the game.