How to Protect Android Apps from Rooting & Rooting Tools

Learn the 3 Easy Steps to Protect Android Apps from Rooting & Rooting Tools. Block Magisk, Magisk Manager, and other rooting tools and frameworks. No code, No SDK.

What is Android Rooting?

Rooting is the process of unlocking the Android OS to gain administrative control (aka: root privileges) over the entire device, OS and file system. Rooting is a form of privilege escalation. Hackers use Rooting to attain privileged control (known as root access) over various Android subsystems. As Android uses the Linux kernel, rooting an Android device gives similar access to administrative (superuser) permissions as on Linux or any other Unix-like operating system.

Rooting Methods

There are essentially 3 methods to Root Android and literally several hundred apps that can be used to facilitate the process. Here’s a quick overview of the 3 rooting methods:

1. Unlocking the bootloader, then re-flashing a zip file that contains the ‘su’ binary (superuser) to gain ‘root access’ or administrative privileges over the entire OS and file system
2. Exploiting a software bug – same outcome, different method than above. In this case, your goal is still to elevate privileges via the su binary, but instead of modifying the bootloader to do so, you’re exploiting a bug in the software in order to achieve root access.
3. Custom ROM
   1. Flashing a custom ROM – This is a modified version of number 1 above, but in this case you’re installing a custom pre-packaged ROM that has comes ‘out of the box’ rooted.
   2. Using a Framework (like Xposed) – You can customize the OS without Flashing ROM, using one of the ‘modules’ from a framework like Xposed.

As I said above, there are literally hundreds of tools that involve, enable or take advantage of rooting in some way. I will categorize those tools below.

Rooting Tools – Categorized and Explained

There are 4 main categories of hacker tools that involve Android Rooting. I created the following chart in an attempt to categories these tools and explain the differences between the tools and how they are used. Note that some tools belong to multiple categories, mainly because many of these tools are quite versatile and multi-functional.

USE CASES – How Hackers Use Rooting Tools to Cheat in Mobile Games

The above tools are often ‘mixed and matched’ in many different ways to achieve very specific outcomes. Here are a few specific real-world examples that I’ve come across in my research:

Use Case 1: Casual Gamer who wants to cheat, but doesn’t have a ton of hacking/coding experience:

Use Magisk to Root an Android device. Then install Magisk Manager to manage access to the other apps for which you intend to grant root privileges, such as Lucky Patcher. You can then use Lucky Patcher to cheat or modify mobile games (for example, bypass licensing verifications, turn off google ads, modify in-app purchase logic, change game values).

Use Case 2: More experienced gamer/hacker who wants to cheat in mobile games in a very specific way, or who wants to build ‘mods’ or tools for other cheaters to use.

Like the use case above, this gamer may use the same or similar tools to initially achieve root access (eg: Magisk or Xposed). But then they might use an app like GameGuardian to do a little more reverse engineering by using GameGuardian’s built-in debugger, emulator, or fuzzer to understand how and where game values are stored and so that they can change those values. But let’s assume this hacker wants those values to be permanent (ie: she doesn’t want to repeat these tasks every time she wants to play (cheat) in the game. Or maybe she wants to enable other players (cheaters). Now that she knows where and how these values are stored, she might pick up a tool like Frida, and use Frida’s dynamic code instrumentation capabilities to inject new code (ie: she will replace the existing code which stores game values and replace it with her own code), then repackage the new game up as a ‘mod’. Or similarly, she can use a hex editor or an Emulator like Nox to engage in ROM-hacking, to edit the memory to (to unlock game features, bypass in-app purchases, add more value to the game, etc).

How to Protect Android Apps Against Rooting

Jan Sysmans