Reproducing mobile security findings is one of those tasks that sounds trivial until you actually try to do it.
Desktop traffic? Easy.
Android → API → Burp? Suddenly you’re juggling emulators, system certificates, proxy configuration, and half-remembered setup steps you only touch a few times a year.
If you’re primarily a backend engineer, this usually means losing time just getting to the point where you can see the traffic, let alone reason about the bug.
I got tired of rebuilding the same fragile setup, so I automated it.
The problem
When a security researcher reports an issue involving a mobile client, validating it often requires recreating an environment you don’t normally live in.
On paper, the setup is straightforward:
- Android emulator
- Burp Suite acting as a man-in-the-middle
- Burp CA installed into the system trust store
- Emulator traffic routed through Burp
- Requests flowing into your API
In practice:
- Emulator images behave differently
- Cert installation is easy to get wrong
- HTTPS breaks silently
- You end up debugging the tooling instead of the issue
None of this is hard. It’s just annoying, fragile, and repetitive.
The goal
I wanted something that would:
Get me from “report received” to “inspectable HTTPS traffic” quickly
- Require minimal Android knowledge
- Be repeatable and disposable
- Let me focus on validating the issue, not the plumbing
That’s it. No grand framework. Just removing friction from a recurring workflow.
What android-burp does
android-burp automates standing up an Android emulator wired through Burp Suite into your API.
Specifically, it handles:
- Provisioning an Android emulator
- Installing Burp’s CA certificate into the system trust store
- Routing emulator traffic through Burp
- Getting you to inspectable HTTPS traffic with minimal ceremony
The intent is not to replace understanding how this works — it’s to avoid re-learning it every single time.
A note on AI assistance
I’m a backend engineer by trade, not a mobile specialist.
This project was built with heavy AI assistance while working through unfamiliar Android internals. Not as a replacement for understanding, but as a force multiplier for:
- Exploring tooling quickly
- Validating assumptions
- Iterating without spending days in docs
The result is something that’s already paid for itself in saved time.
Who this is for
This will probably be useful if you:
- Work on APIs that have mobile clients
- Validate security reports involving Android apps
- Don’t want to become an Android expert just to reproduce an issue
- Are tired of rebuilding the same setup from scratch
If you live in mobile tooling every day, this might feel boring.
If you don’t — it’s a relief.
The repo
The project is fully open source here:
https://github.com/salesforce-misc/android-burp
Feedback, issues, and PRs are welcome. If it saves someone else from the same yak-shaving, it’s done its job.
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