Detecting an emulator, and getting around detection

So recently I got an email asking about spoofing your Android ID, normally I just redirect people to my other articles, but I guess this one was different. The person specifically was looking to test applications on their emulator, and needed to avoid “emulator detection”. It didn’t seem like anything tricky - but I googled quick with not many results returned. The things that where returned where pretty… Well - overcomplicated. My first thought was that this should just be located in one of the many sqlite3 db’s - and it turns out it was. Simple little work around yet again, have to love those!

First off, lets see how most applications detect emulators. It’s done using a simple call to Secure.getString() using Secure.ANDROID_ID (previously this was done using System.getString() and System.ANDROID_ID, though these methods are now deprecated). The “detection” often relies on this returning null when it is read inside an emulator. With this said, below is a normal emulator detection snippet;

String android_id = Secure.getString(getContentResolver(), Secure.ANDROID_ID);
if (android_id == null) {
  // This was run inside an emulator, don't let the user continue!
} else {
  // Oh ok, everythings normal, lets keep going
}

Very simple, doesn’t do anything to complicated, just checks for null being returned. So how can we get this to not return null in an emulator? Easy – just a simple sqlite3 insert command!

Open a shell to your emulator, and navigate to /data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases/, open up the db in sqlite3 and insert a value using androidid as the key, like the following;

# cd /data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases
# sqlite3 settings.db
SQLite version 3.6.22
Enter ".help" for instructions
Enter SQL statements terminated with a ";"
sqlite> insert into secure ('name', 'value' ) values ('android_id','deadbeef4badcafe');
sqlite> .exit

That’s all you need to do. Now all programs that use that method for detecting if it is an emulator will be returned the value you’ve entered as the android_id.