How to Detect Hooking (Frida) on Flutter

Protect your Flutter app from runtime attacks like Frida and Xposed with smart detection.

Imagine your app's security is a locked vault. What if an attacker could pick the lock and alter its contents while it's actively being used? That, in essence, is what a hooking attack does. This runtime threat is particularly dangerous for Flutter apps, but you can defend against it effectively.

What is Hooking?

Hooking is a technique where attackers use tools like Frida “intercept” and modify your app's normal operations as they happen. Think of it like a spy intercepting a mail carrier, reading a sensitive message, and even changing it before it's delivered.

This gives attackers the power to:

• Disable security measures, such as license checks or in-app purchase validations.

• Extract secrets like API keys directly from your app's memory.

• Inject malicious code to commit fraud or steal user data.

Attackers often target the native Swift or Kotlin code within a Flutter application to manipulate its behavior.

How common is hooking?

About 0.05% of devices are hooked. That may sound small, but at global scale it still means millions of devices. If your app handles sensitive data, you can’t ignore this risk.

Number of Hooked Devices (source: Talsec)

Check out our live global stats at my.talsec.app

How to Detect Hooking?

You might be tempted to build your own defenses, like searching for frida-server processes or blocking suspicious network ports. Unfortunately, these simple checks rarely work for long. The developers of hooking frameworks are constantly updating their tools to be stealthier and evade these exact kinds of naive detections.

This creates a high-stakes cat-and-mouse game—one that requires constant vigilance and deep expertise. That's why relying on a specialized security SDK is the safer and more effective choice.

freeRASP (by Talsec)

• Very strong detections including root and jailbreak detections (Magisk, Dopamine)

• Actively maintained

• Works offline with minimal performance overhead

• Comes with 14 extra detections like app integrity, root/jailbreak, emulators, debugging, screenshots, etc.

• Trusted by 6000+ apps worldwide

final threatCallback = ThreatCallback(
      onHooks: () => print('Hooking detected'),
      ...
);

Talsec.attachListener(...);
Talsec.instance.start(...);