It was really only a matter of time. Epic Games was, after all, tempting fate, not to mention hackers and criminals in its righteous zeal to open up the Android (but not iOS) app ecosystem. A bug in the Fortnite Installer for Android apparently left devices vulnerable to “man-in-the-disk” attacks for weeks, or at least until they update to the latest version of the installer. And while both sides are thankful for the other’s swift action, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney didn’t miss the opportunity to call out Google for not breaking its own vulnerability disclosure policies.
To be clear, the wayward app in question isn’t Fortnite for Android itself but the Fortnite Installer for Android. This utility is necessary to download the game from Epic’s servers and has to be installed separately. It is also necessary to remain installed in order to update Fortnite itself, as some early testers have discovered.
Unfortunately, the Installer app has a bug that enables what is called a man-in-the-disk attack. A cousin of the popular man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack, this basically means that some sleeper malware installed on the devices can monitor the Fortnite Installer when it’s about to download Fortnite, hijack the connection, and force it to download something else, usually the actual malware payload. The Fortnite Installer will then install that payload, which can then be granted full Android permissions. Given how the unknown sources system works in this particular case, neither the user nor the Fortnite Installer itself will ever know.
There is some good news, of course. First is that this MitD requires that the “sleeper” malware be installed on the device already. Given the popularity of Fortnite, however, it’s now likely that hackers will be waiting for such opportunities and will use any means necessary to dupe users into downloading seemingly innocuous apps outside of Google Play Store. The second and more important good news is that Google reported the vulnerability to Epic before making it public and Epic Games was quickly able to fix it and roll out an update (reportedly).
You’d think it all ends there, but Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, while thankful for Google’s bug report, lost no time in chiding Google for disclosing the vulnerability within 7 days, denying Epic’s request to withhold information until a longer 90-day period. Here’s Sweeney’s statement to Android…
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