host file in android

Question

I have a rooted device. I would like to protect my hosts file from being deleted, maybe with a password or something like that. Is this possible?


— Ashutosh Soni | Sources

Answer

As is currently stated (revision 4), the answer is No.



Your hosts file is located at /system/etc/hosts, in a filesystem of (probably) ext4. Since ext4 uses regular Unix permissions and Android does not support ACL, you have no chance to do so.



However, I don't think you really should protect it as it's protected by default, because /system is mounted as read-only by default. As long as you don't grant your root access to malicious apps, no one will delete your hosts file.



Moreover, there are alternative dirty approaches but I don't think they're much helpful so I'm not posting them here.


— iBug | Sources

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