Black and Gray Industry Insights: Android Republic

With its excellent open source ecosystem, Android has become the leading mobile phone system today. According to research firm Canalys, the overall market share of Android devices has reached 78%.

Although the open source ecology has brought Android a better space for development, there are also certain security problems. In terms of game security, the Android side of a game is relatively lower threshold for hacking and making cheats, and faces more serious security problems.

It is learnt that Android Republic, a platform that mainly focuses on hacking Android games, has a huge scale, with more than 390,000 registered members, many hacked games and a very high update frequency, and implanted different hacking features for different types of games and playing styles, among which there are many popular games that we are familiar with. There are a lot of hacked games and they are updated frequently.



These games are hacked and implanted with cheats such as adjusting attack multipliers, game mechanics and other features. In addition, the hacking platform is highly commercialised, with a complete payment system, and also distinguishes between free and paid items according to the type of features hacked, further attracting players to download and turn to pay in order to amass more black income.
In addition to a large number of Android game hacks, there are also boards within the Android Republic platform that target cheating on the iOS side of games. According to the investigation, it contains a large number of solutions and techniques for jailbreak cheating, as well as tools to share the use of other means to achieve cheating in non-jailbreak mode.
 

 
For a game, the consequences of being hacked are very serious. This means that the game's code logic and resource files will be analysed and tampered by the hacker, and the hacked version will attract a large number of players to cheat, destroying the fairness of the game and causing a large number of genuine players to lose, and the game's code and art resources are also likely to be stolen and used.

JikGuard has developed a mature and robust anti-cheat solution that effectively protects games against hacks, cheats, and other security threats. Its integration into several popular titles has proven its outstanding protection capability.
 

Anti-Cheat Features

JikGuard has developed a behavior-based detection solution to address a wide range of cheats and game modification threats. Powered by an intelligent sensing system with over 300 detection dimensions, it effectively neutralizes various cheat types and their variants, delivering comprehensive and reliable protection.
 

Anti-Hack Features

JikGuard's exclusive API-Signature-Free Verification Technology deeply encrypts the game's engine and code, and performs multiple checks on game package signatures and file integrity, greatly reducing the possibility of being bypassed and preventing the game from being implanted with malicious modules, removing advertisements, and other behaviours.
 

Proactive Malicious Module Detection Mechanism

Unlike other security products on the market that rely on obtaining cheat samples to respond, JikGuard’s proprietary Proactive Malicious Module Detection Mechanism can actively identify suspicious modules within the game. Combined with real-time countermeasures, it enables a proactive defense approach that significantly shortens the cheat detection cycle.

 

Security Environment Detection

JikGuard leverages low-level detection mechanisms to accurately identify the operating environment of the game, such as jailbreak, ROOT, virtual machine, virtual framework, cloud phone, etc., and provides customized crush policies.