Testing if a phone is rooted

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Determine if running on a rooted device

I would like to know just whether or not a phone is rooted, without requesting root privileges. How can I do that?

Testing if File.Exists("/system/bin/su")? Not sure, I think I cannot due to permissions
Testing if Superuser app is installed? Hmm, I think I need a special permission to use PackageManager and Superuser is not the onlu su manager (I know SuperSU for example)
Trying to run su is not an option because it triggers the su prompt which is something I don't want in a non-root app

Any idea? My purpose is to obtain anonymous statistics on how many devices are rooted, obviously with user's consent :)

If I didn't need a special permission option 2 could be a feasible idea because there are a bunch of su managers that can be simply enumerated in code — usr-local-ΕΨΗΕΛΩΝ, Sep 16 '12 at 20:52
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4805556/how-to-detect-rooted-phone — Austin, Sep 16 '12 at 20:53

Krypton · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-17T06:26:07.377

0

Option 1. It is possible, it doesn't need any special permission.

Option 2. The rooted phone may not come with any Superuser manager application.

Option 3. As you said, it's not a good way to detect.

Besides, there's another option that is to check ro.build.tag (using getprop | grep ro.buil.tag or android.os.Build.TAG) if it contains testkeys string.

Edit: for option 1, I would suggest you find by setuid/setgid permission (i.e. find / -perm -2000 -o -perm -4000, and check if su is in the list)

edited Sep 17 '12 at 06:26

answered Sep 17 '12 at 02:09

Krypton

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Can you explain what the testkeys build tag is, and how it is related with root? – thisiscrazy4 Sep 15 '13 at 03:48

score -3 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 17 '12 at 04:40

You cannot reliably do this, as what it means for a phone to be "rooted" is not always the same. What all the proposals you will get do is test for some of the popular root-related tools. But it is not possible to detect if the phone has been rooted in a way that does not utilize those tools.

Testing if a phone is rooted

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