Usually, the communication between native and the app is done via
sending intents to either broadcast or activity. These communication
channels are for launching root requests dialogs, sending root request
notifications (the toast you see when an app gained root access), and
root request logging.
Sending intents by am (activity manager) usually requires specifying
the component name in the format of <pkg>/<class name>. This means parts
of Magisk Manager cannot be randomized or else the native daemon is
unable to know where to send data to the app.
On modern Android (not sure which API is it introduced), it is possible
to send broadcasts to a package, not a specific component. Which
component will receive the intent depends on the intent filter declared
in AndroidManifest.xml. Since we already have a mechanism in native code
to keep track of the package name of Magisk Manager, this makes it
perfect to pass intents to Magisk Manager that have components being
randomly obfuscated (stub APKs).
There are a few caveats though. Although this broadcasting method works
perfectly fine on AOSP and most systems, there are OEMs out there
shipping ROMs blocking broadcasts unexpectedly. In order to make sure
Magisk works in all kinds of scenarios, we run actual tests every boot
to determine which communication method should be used.
We have 3 methods in total, ordered in preference:
1. Broadcasting to a package
2. Broadcasting to a specific component
3. Starting a specific activity component
Method 3 will always work on any device, but the downside is anytime
a communication happens, Magisk Manager will steal foreground focus
regardless of whether UI is drawn. Method 1 is the only way to support
obfuscated stub APKs. The communication test will test method 1 and 2,
and if Magisk Manager is able to receive the messages, it will then
update the daemon configuration to use whichever is preferable. If none
of the broadcasts can be delivered, then the fallback method 3 will be
used.
In commit 8d4c407, native Magisk always launches an activity for
communicating with Magisk Manager. While this works extremely well,
since it also workaround stupid OEMs that blocks broadcasts, it has a
problem: launching an activity will claim the focus of the device,
which could be super annoying in some circumstances.
This commit adds a new feature to run a broadcast test on boot complete.
If Magisk Manager successfully receives the broadcast, it will toggle
a setting in magiskd so all future su loggings and notifies will always
use broadcasts instead of launching activities.
Fix#1412
Before switching to the new MagiskHide implementation (APK inotify),
logcat parsing provides us lots of information to target a process.
We were targeting components so that apps with multi-processes
can still be hidden properly.
After switching to the new implementation, our granularity is limited
to the UID of the process. This is especially dangerous since Android
allow apps signed with the same signature to share UIDs, and many system
apps utilize this for elevated permissions for some services.
This commit introduces process name matching. We could not blanketly
target an UID, so the workaround is to verify its process name before
unmounting.
The tricky thing is that any app developer is allowed to name the
process of its component to whatever they want; there is no 'one
rule to catch them all' to target a specific package. As a result,
Magisk Manager is updated to scan through all components of all apps,
and show different processes of the same app, each as a separate
hide target in the list.
The hide target database also has to be updated accordingly.
Each hide target is now a <package name, process name> pair. The
magiskhide CLI and Magisk Manager is updated to support this new
target format.
