Fortnite is the biggest of big deals in gaming. Kids play it, adults play it, boys play it, girls play it, and it’s making Epic Games tons and tons of money but their desire to not share that money with Google may be putting some of their millions of players at risk. Namely the players who are installing the game on their Android phones.
“With Fortnite’s influence over more than 125 million players, teaching people to download apps outside of the official store is exposing millions of people to a risky practice, researchers warned.” – CNET
Experts are warning that Fortnite’s “side loading” method of installation, which bypasses the Google Play Store, is opening up users to a ton of security risks. One such risk was found by Google’s team only two days after the game officially launched on Epic’s site. The flaw allowed hackers to exchange the game file for any file they wanted as long it was named the same thing as the installation file it replaced. This meant hackers could have put whatever malware, spyware, or virus into another file and millions of devices would have been infected. Also, since it’s release, over 1/3 of the malicious files found by Google security experts have been Fortnite themed.
The solution to this is obviously to roll out an update, herein lies the biggest issue with side loading software, it is difficult to push a forced security update out without an app store. This means that users will either have to seek out an update or allow it to install when they boot up the game. If someone has the game installed for a while without playing it, any corruption will stay in their phone until an update is found or forced by opening the app.
What Parents Should Know
If your child wants to play Fortnite, I recommend letting them do so on their computer or a console. My advice is to not allow your child to play the game on Android at all. I recommend not allowing side loading of apps at all either as this opens their device up for major security threats. If you are using Android Family Link to manage app installations then sideloading will completely undermine your methods of parent control. If you’re monitoring activity and see something called An .APK file you’ll know that side loading is happening and you should talk to your kids about what they’re installing on their device.