Secure mode

AndroidViewClient has two possible back-ends:

• ViewServer
• UiAutomator

UiAutomator works on Android API 16 and higher, so if your device has a previous version your only alternative is ViewServer.

System ViewServer is started only when the device is not considered secure.

    private boolean isSystemSecure() {
        return "1".equals(SystemProperties.get(SYSTEM_SECURE, "1")) &&
                "0".equals(SystemProperties.get(SYSTEM_DEBUGGABLE, "0"));
    }

The properties involved to consider a device secure are

private static final String SYSTEM_SECURE = "ro.secure";
private static final String SYSTEM_DEBUGGABLE = "ro.debuggable";

This oneliner can be used to test these properties

$ (eval $(adb  shell getprop | dos2unix | egrep '\[ro\.secure]|\[ro\.debuggable]' | sed 's/\./_/g; s/]: /=/g; s/[][]//g'); [[ 1 == $ro_secure && 0 == $ro_debuggable ]] && echo "System is secure: AVC won't work" || echo "System is not secure: AVC will work")

Resources

• patch the kernel image boot.img
• Enabling HierarchyViewer on Rooted Android Devices