Table Of Contents
Magisk v27.0
- [Zygisk] Introduce new code injection mechanism
- [Zygisk] Support new signature introduced in U QPR2
- [SEPolicy] Update libsepol to properly set some policy config bits
- [MagiskBoot] Support compressing
init
so Magisk is installable on devices with small boot partitions - [ResetProp] Add new wait for property feature
resetprop -w
Magisk v26.4
- [MagiskBoot] Don’t pad zeros if signed boot image is larger
- [MagiskPolicy] Fix
genfscon
andfilename_trans
- [MagiskPolicy] Fix bug in
libsepol
- [Zygisk] Fix and simplify file descriptor sanitization logic
- [App] Prevent OOM when patching AP tarfiles
- [App] Fix bug in device configuration detection
- [Daemon] Fix certificate parsing of APKs
- [General] Fix logging errors from C++ code being ignored
Magisk v26.1
Changes from v26.0
- [App] Fix crashing when revoking root permissions
- [MagiskInit] Always prefer
ext4
partitions overf2fs
when selecting the pre-init partition - [General] Restore module files’ context/owner/group from mirror. This is a regression introduced in v26.0
(The following is the same as v26.0 release notes)
Hey! Long time no see!
Bumping Minimum Android Version to 6.0
Magisk’s support for Android Lollipop has been pretty broken for a while without it being noticed. Also, none of the active developers of Magisk have actual hardware to run Android Lollipop. We rely on using the official Android emulator for regression testing on older platforms, however Google never shipped a Lollipop emulator image with SELinux support, leaving us with no option but to drop Lollipop support since we don’t feel comfortable supporting Android Lollipop without adequate testing.
New Magic Mount Implementation
Magic Mount, the feature that make modules modify partitions, has gone through a major rewrite. The existing implementation doesn’t work well with OEMs injecting overlays into their system using overlayfs
. The new implementation fundamentally changes how filesystem mirrors are created, giving us a more accurate clone of the unmodified filesystem.
New sepolicy.rule
Implementation
Magisk allows modules to provide custom SELinux patches by including the file sepolicy.rule
. Due to the complicated nature of SELinux patching, the compatibility of this functionality has been pretty spotty; many devices are not supported. In this release, a brand new pre-init partition detection mechanism has been designed to support even more devices. Due to complicated reasons, this detection mechanism cannot be performed in a custom recovery environment.
This means that any installation of Magisk v26+ using custom recovery will be incomplete; a subsequent re-installation through the Magisk app after booting up is required.
Zygisk Updates
The new Zygisk API v4 is now live! It comes with new features and a refined PLT function hook API. The implementaton of Zygisk has also gone through some major refactoring, including new code loading/unloading mechanisms and a new PLT function hook implementation.
Head over to the Zygisk Module Sample repository to check out the new API and documentation!
Magisk v25.2
- [MagiskInit] Fix a potential issue when stub cpio is used
- [MagiskInit] Fix reboot to recovery when stub cpio is used
- [MagiskInit] Fix sepolicy.rules symlink for rootfs devices
- [General] Better data encryption detection
- [General] Move the whole logging infrastructure into Rust
Magisk v25.1
- [MagiskBoot] Fix ramdisk backup being incorrectly skipped
- [MagiskBoot] Add new feature to detect unsupported dtb and abort during installation
- [Zygisk] Change binary hijack paths
- [App] Fix incorrect recovery mode detection and installation
- [MagiskInit] Fix config not properly exported in legacy SAR devices
- [General] Enforce the Magisk app to always match or be newer than
magiskd
Magisk v25.0
Another major release! A lot of the changes aren’t visible at the surface, but v25 is actually a really substantial upgrade!
MagiskInit Rewrite
A significant portion of magiskinit
(the critical software that runs before your device boots up) is completely rewritten from scratch. Ever since Android introduced Project Treble in Android 8.0, Magisk has been constantly fighting against the increasingly complex partitioning and early mount setups of all kinds of devices, sometimes with weird OEM specific implementations. It got to a point that magiskinit
had become so complicated that few people (including myself!) were aware of every detail, and maintaining this piece of software like this was clearly not sustainable. After many months of planning (yes, this whole re-architecture has been in my head for a long time) and some help from external contributors, a whole new sepolicy
injection mechanism is introduced into Magisk, solving the “SELinux Problem” once and for all.
Since this is a full paradigm shift on how Magisk hot-patch the device at boot, several behaviors that many developers implicitly relied on might not exist. For example, Magisk no longer patches fstabs in most scenarios, which means AVB will remain intact; some custom kernels rely on AVB being stripped out for them by Magisk.
MagiskSU Security Enhancements
The superuser functionality of Magisk has not seen much changes ever since its introduction. v25 focuses on making root permission management more accurate and secure:
- Add a whole new package tracking system to ensure malicious UID reuse attack cannot be performed
- Properly support and implement the UX in the Magisk app for packages using
sharedUserId
- Enforce root manager APK signature verification to combat the rampant unofficial Magisk app “mods”
Many might not realize, but using a trusted, unmodified Magisk app is really important. Magisk’s root daemon treats the Magisk app differently and gives it blanket root access without any restrictions. A modded Magisk app can potentially backdoor your device.
And in case some of you are about to put on your tin foil hats, this is not designed to “vendor lock-in”; the goal is to make sure your root management app comes from the same developer of the underlying root implementation. Magisk’s build system allows custom distributors to use its own signing keys, and in addition, I am also providing official debug builds which skips any signature verification for development.
- [MagiskInit] Update 2SI implementation, significantly increase device compatibility (e.g. Sony Xperia devices)
- [MagiskInit] Introduce new
sepolicy
injection mechanism - [MagiskInit] Support Oculus Go
- [MagiskInit] Support Android 13 GKIs (Pixel 6)
- [MagiskBoot] Fix vbmeta extraction implementation
- [App] Fix stub app on older Android versions
- [App] [MagiskSU] Properly support apps using
sharedUserId
- [MagiskSU] Fix a possible crash in
magiskd
- [MagiskSU] Prune unused UIDs as soon as
system_server
restarts to prevent UID reuse attacks - [MagiskSU] Verify and enforce the installed Magisk app’s certificate to match the distributor’s signature
- [MagiskSU] [Zygisk] Proper package management and detection
- [Zygisk] Fix function hooking on devices running Android 12 with old kernels
- [Zygisk] Fix Zygisk’s self code unloading implementation
- [DenyList] Fix DenyList on shared UID apps
- [BusyBox] Add workaround for devices running old kernels
Magisk v24.3
- [General] Stop using
getrandom
syscall - [Zygisk] Update API to v3, adding new fields to
AppSpecializeArgs
- [App] Improve app repackaging installation workflow
Magisk v24.2
- [MagiskSU] Fix buffer overflow
- [MagiskSU] Fix owner managed multiuser superuser settings
- [MagiskSU] Fix command logging when using
su -c <cmd>
- [MagiskSU] Prevent su request indefinite blocking
- [MagiskBoot] Support
lz4_legacy
archive with multiple magic - [MagiskBoot] Fix
lz4_lg
compression - [DenyList] Allow targeting processes running as system UID
- [Zygisk] Workaround Samsung’s “early zygote”
- [Zygisk] Improved Zygisk loading mechanism
- [Zygisk] Fix application UID tracking
- [Zygisk] Fix improper
umask
being set in zygote - [App] Fix BusyBox execution test
- [App] Improve stub loading mechanism
- [App] Major app upgrade flow improvements
- [General] Improve commandline error handling and messaging
Magisk v24.1
- [App] Stability improvements
Magisk v24
It has been a while since the last public release, long time no see! A personal update for those unaware: I am now working at Google on the Android Platform Security team. Without further ado, let’s jump right into it!
MagiskHide Removal
I have lost interest in fighting this battle for quite a while; plus, the existing MagiskHide implementation is flawed in so many ways. Decoupling Magisk from root hiding is, in my opinion, beneficial to the community. Ever since my announcement on Twitter months ago, highly effective “root hiding” modules (much MUCH better than MagiskHide) has been flourishing, which again shows that people are way more capable than I am on this subject. So why not give those determined their time to shine, and let me focus on improving Magisk instead of drowning in the everlasting cat-and-mouse game 😉.
Sunsetting Magisk-Modules-Repo
Due to lack of time and maintenance, the centralized Magisk-Modules-Repo was frozen, and the functionality to download modules from the repo is removed in v24.0. As a supplement, module developers can now specify an updateJson
URL in their modules. The Magisk app will use that to check, download, and install module updates.
Introducing Zygisk
Zygisk is Magisk in Zygote, the next big thing for Magisk! When this feature is enabled, a part of Magisk will run in the Zygote
daemon process, allowing module developers to run code directly in every Android apps’ process. If you’ve heard of Riru, then Zygisk is inspired by that project and is functionally similar, though the implementation is quite different internally. I cannot wait to see what module developers can achieve using Zygisk!
Documentation
For developers, details about updateJson
and building Zygisk modules can all be found in the updated documentation.
- [General] MagiskHide is removed from Magisk
- [General] Support Android 12
- [General] Support devices that do not support 32-bit and only runs 64-bit code
- [General] Update BusyBox to 1.34.1
- [Zygisk] Introduce new feature: Zygisk
- [Zygisk] Introduce DenyList feature to revert Magisk features in user selected processes
- [MagiskBoot] Support patching 32-bit kernel zImages
- [MagiskBoot] Support boot image header v4
- [MagiskBoot] Support patching out
skip_initramfs
from dtb bootargs - [MagiskBoot] Add new env variable
PATCHVBMETAFLAG
to configure whether vbmeta flags should be patched - [MagiskInit] Support loading fstab from
/system/etc
(required for Pixel 6) - [MagiskInit] Support
/proc/bootconfig
for loading boot configurations - [MagiskInit] Better support for some Meizu devices
- [MagiskInit] Better support for some OnePlus/Oppo/Realme devices
- [MagiskInit] Support
init.real
on some Sony devices - [MagiskInit] Skip loading Magisk when detecting DSU
- [MagiskPolicy] Load
*_compat_cil_file
from system_ext - [MagiskSU] Use isolated devpts if the kernel supports it
- [MagiskSU] Fix root shell if isolated mount namespace is set
- [resetprop] Deleted properties are now wiped from memory instead of just unlinking
- [App] Build a single APK for all ABIs
- [App] Switch to use standard bottom navigation bar
- [App] Downloading modules from the centralized Magisk-Modules-Repo is removed
- [App] Support user configuration of boot image vbmeta patching
- [App] Restore the ability to install Magisk on the other slot on some A/B devices
- [App] Allow modules to specify an update URL for in-app update + install
Magisk v23
Note: Magisk v22 is the last major version to support Jellybean and Kitkat. Magisk v23 only supports Android 5.0 and higher.
- [App] Update snet extension. This fixes SafetyNet API errors.
- [App] Fix a bug in the stub app that causes APK installation to fail
- [App] Hide annoying errors in logs when hidden as stub
- [App] Fix issues when patching ODIN tar files when the app is hidden
- [General] Remove all pre Android 5.0 support
- [General] Update BusyBox to use proper libc
- [General] Fix C++ undefined behaviors
- [General] Several
sepolicy.rule
copy/installation fixes - [MagiskPolicy] Remove unnecessary sepolicy rules
- [MagiskHide] Update package and process name validation logic
- [MagiskHide] Some changes that prevents zygote deadlock