Determine if running on a rooted device

Question

My app has a certain piece of functionality that will only work on a device where root is available. Rather than having this feature fail when it is used (and then show an a

Answer 1

Root check at Java level is not a safe solution. If your app has Security Concerns to run on a Rooted device , then please use this solution.

Kevin's answer works unless the phone also has an app like RootCloak . Such apps have a Handle over Java APIs once phone is rooted and they mock these APIs to return phone is not rooted.

I have written a native level code based on Kevin's answer , it works even with RootCloak ! Also it does not cause any memory leak issues.

#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include "android_log.h"
#include 
#include 
#include 

JNIEXPORT int JNICALL Java_com_test_RootUtils_checkRootAccessMethod1(
        JNIEnv* env, jobject thiz) {


    //Access function checks whether a particular file can be accessed
    int result = access("/system/app/Superuser.apk",F_OK);

    ANDROID_LOGV( "File Access Result %d\n", result);

    int len;
    char build_tags[PROP_VALUE_MAX]; // PROP_VALUE_MAX from .
    len = __system_property_get(ANDROID_OS_BUILD_TAGS, build_tags); // On return, len will equal (int)strlen(model_id).
    if(strcmp(build_tags,"test-keys") == 0){
        ANDROID_LOGV( "Device has test keys\n", build_tags);
        result = 0;
    }
    ANDROID_LOGV( "File Access Result %s\n", build_tags);
    return result;

}

JNIEXPORT int JNICALL Java_com_test_RootUtils_checkRootAccessMethod2(
        JNIEnv* env, jobject thiz) {
    //which command is enabled only after Busy box is installed on a rooted device
    //Outpput of which command is the path to su file. On a non rooted device , we will get a null/ empty path
    //char* cmd = const_cast"which su";
    FILE* pipe = popen("which su", "r");
    if (!pipe) return -1;
    char buffer[128];
    std::string resultCmd = "";
    while(!feof(pipe)) {
        if(fgets(buffer, 128, pipe) != NULL)
            resultCmd += buffer;
    }
    pclose(pipe);

    const char *cstr = resultCmd.c_str();
    int result = -1;
    if(cstr == NULL || (strlen(cstr) == 0)){
        ANDROID_LOGV( "Result of Which command is Null");
    }else{
        result = 0;
        ANDROID_LOGV( "Result of Which command %s\n", cstr);
        }
    return result;

}

JNIEXPORT int JNICALL Java_com_test_RootUtils_checkRootAccessMethod3(
        JNIEnv* env, jobject thiz) {


    int len;
    char build_tags[PROP_VALUE_MAX]; // PROP_VALUE_MAX from .
    int result = -1;
    len = __system_property_get(ANDROID_OS_BUILD_TAGS, build_tags); // On return, len will equal (int)strlen(model_id).
    if(len >0 && strstr(build_tags,"test-keys") != NULL){
        ANDROID_LOGV( "Device has test keys\n", build_tags);
        result = 0;
    }

    return result;

}

In your Java code , you need to create wrapper class RootUtils to make the native calls

    public boolean checkRooted() {

       if( rootUtils.checkRootAccessMethod3()  == 0 || rootUtils.checkRootAccessMethod1()  == 0 || rootUtils.checkRootAccessMethod2()  == 0 )
           return true;
      return false;
     }