The FORTNITE Installer For Android Was Vulnerable To Malicious Software

Fortnite on Android is still a risky deal. The security team of Google has warned of a significant breach in the software of the installer of Fortnite Battle Royale in the platform. There is a hidden door that could serve for other malicious applications to exploit it, replacing the package with the game for other content or malware. They can even extract sensitive information from the phone as if it were the official app.

This situation could have ended in a great tragedy taking into account the spread of the game on the Google platform. According to the Mountain View company, the malicious content was downloaded using the write permissions of the Fortnite application, allowing the malware to reach the phones without the users being aware of what happened. That is, the user could have downloaded the application officially without believing that he was doing anything strange, and still receive an injection of unwanted content on thier Android smartphone.

Google quickly notified Epic Games on August 15 of this vulnerability and the company, just 48 hours later, managed to correct it with the 2.1.0 update of the game. The patch is installed directly in the internal storage of the phones, avoiding the previous error.

Companies often warn of this type of problems and failures to call the responsibility of content developers and draw attention to their own and thus avoid strange places or possibly fraudulent apps on their devices. However, Tim Sweeney, president of Epic, has been upset with the way Google lets people know.

"Making this error public is an irresponsible act, they were kindly asked to hide the bug until the update was widely installed, they refused, creating an unnecessary risk for Android users in order to face the gallery." he explained. There are few who believe that Google has taken the matter personally.

Fortnite, one of the most successful video games in the world, is not installed through the official Google Play Store. To be able to access the game you have to do it in an alternative way and with external installers. Some see this as "revenge" against Epic for distributing their game in other ways, making Google not take a 30% of the proceeds of the battle royale.