How to create your own Android spy app

Like many, I know nothing about Java. Oh wait a minute, Java and C++ have similar syntax and I did learn the latter. But still, I have no clue about how to create an Android app, not to mention Android spy apps.

But this should not be an obstacle. I recently get to know that someone has already released the source code for an Android Remote Access Tool (RAT) known as AndroRAT. It allows you to remotely control any Android device which installs this app, read its messages, phone book, call log, use its camera and microphone, and pinpoint it on a map in real-time. Basically you can do anything you want, free of charge. In fact, there are already many AndroRAT based Android  spy-ware out there.

Here I will introduce how to customize it and get the app working the easy way.

In order to begin the whole process, you will need to get a few things ready. If you alrady know a lot about Android and Android apps, then it should be a piece of cake. Even if you are completely new to Android, it’s still quite easy as long as you know how to install software on your computer.

There are actually three software need to be installed, eclipse (Eclipse IDE for Java Developers), Java Platform, and Android SDK.

Once you are done with the software installation, head over to github and download the Androrat files, what really matters is the source code folder names src. The Androrat sub-folder is for the Android phone, and AndroratServer is for the server side. But first, you need to customize and compile them.

Now open eclipse and import Androrat, you will see two projects.

Now import two jar packages. If other packages are missing, you can always download them at  FindJar.

I tried to run them directly. First the Server app, see below. The settings like server port can be changed via config.txt or the source code. In fact, you can change the IP address there too. If you have a domain name, better replace the IP address with it.

Then the mobile app (I did not compile it here), it will switch to the home screen automatically once you are done with installation, and you won’t find it in recent apps. It names itself LogsProvider, but you can change it to whatever you wish. Better something like a normal app so others won’t have any doubts.

In order to better hide and protect the app, there are a few changes to be made in LauncherActivity.class.

A few possible tweaks below, although you may not see the same gui.

Note, in order to run it on other devices the easy way, you need to compile the mobile files and create an apk file.

A few thoughts

i, build a PHP based server side script which will handle the data transferred from the mobile app and save them in MySQL. You can later display these data on a webpage and a map. You can even let others create an account and let many people use this service, paid or for free.
ii, create a service and monitoring SMS, connect to the server once text message contains certain keywords arrive.
iii, hide from anti-virus apps or even kill them.