Epic Games has chastised Google for releasing details of a security flaw in its Fortnite for Android installer before many Fortnite players installed a patch.
Epic asked Google to wait 90 days before disclosing the flaw, which would allow cyber criminals to easily hack the installer and replace a legitimate file with a malware fake. Google, however, relying on its standard disclosure practices, disclosed the flaw on August 24, after Epic made a patched version of the installer available.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney then released a statement calling Google irresponsible. “Epic genuinely appreciated Google’s effort to perform an in-depth security audit of Fortnite immediately following our release for Android, and share the results with Epic so we could speedily issue and update to fix the flaw they discovered.
“However,” he continued, “it was irresponsible of Google to publicly disclosed the technical details of the flaw so quickly, while many installations had not yet been updated and were still vulnerable.”
Sweeney went on to suggest Google may have “endangered users” as part of a counter-PR effort against Epic’s distribution of Fortnite outside of Google Play. Epic chose to make the Android version of Fortnite available on its website but not in the Google Play Store, which take a 30 percent cut on downloads.
Previously on WRAL TechWire:
Epic Games will not distribute Android version of Fortnite in Google Play Store
Samsung launches Galaxy Note 9, first phone to support popular Fortnite game
