Epic's First Fortnite Installer Allowed Hackers To Covertly Download and Install Anything on Users' Android Phones, Google Researchers Say (androidcentral.com)

Epic decided to ditch Google Play Store for its sleeper hit Fortnite. By doing so, while Epic may have saved some money that it would have had to split with Google, it also ran into an issue that it could have avoided had it not parted ways with Google. AndroidCentral reports: Google has just publicly disclosed that it discovered an extremely serious vulnerability in Epic's first Fortnite installer for Android that allowed any app on your phone to download and install anything in the background, including apps with full permissions granted, without the user's knowledge. Google's security team first disclosed the vulnerability privately to Epic Games on August 15, and has since released the information publicly following confirmation from Epic that the vulnerability was patched.

[...] When you go to download "Fortnite" you don't actually download the whole game, you download the Fortnite Installer first. The Fortnite Installer is a simple app that you download and install, which then subsequently downloads the full Fortnite game directly from Epic. The problem, as Google's security team discovered, was that the Fortnite Installer was very easily exploitable to hijack the request to download Fortnite from Epic and instead download anything when you tap the button to download the game. It's what's known as a "man-in-the-disk" attack.

Comments

not just fortnight.

[nimbius]

When you go to download "Fortnite" you don't actually download the whole game, you download the Fortnite Installer first.

so this is actually a common method for a lot of applications in the play store as well. its the lazy app developers "curl|sudo /bin/bash" approach to installation. The difference being many of these other apps paid their play store fe--er, i mean those applications are protected by Google.