Connecting Burp Suite to an Android Emulator

I was trying to learn the basics of Android application penetration testing by following a free tutorial from a new training provider I found. I hadn’t heard of them until today, but they specialize in mobile hacking.

I got frustrated because when I reached the Burp Suite portion, the steps didn’t work. So, I went into Googling mode and searched for each error I encountered until I finally got it to work. I figured I’d share this to help others save time searching for answers.

A quick disclaimer: I don’t have any professional experience in mobile application development or mobile application hacking, so I won’t be able to explain in detail why something worked. Let’s begin.

Creating a Virtual Device

First of all, I’m using Windows, but I’m pretty sure the steps are similar on Mac and Linux-based systems like Ubuntu. Assuming you already have the latest version of Android Studio installed — Meerkat, as of this writing — let’s open it and go to More Actions > Virtual Device Manager.

Next, in the Device Manager window, click the plus (+) icon. This will open the Add Device window.

Let’s select Pixel 9, then click Next.

In the Services dropdown, select Android Open Source, and click Intel x86_64 Atom System Image.

Click Finish, then confirm that you want to download the system image. This will download the necessary files for our emulator, and once it’s done, we’ll have a Pixel 9 emulator ready.

Let’s leave it there for now, as we still need to set up a few more things.

Preparing Burp Suite

Now, let’s open Burp Suite (Community Edition) and configure our proxy listeners. Open the Settings window by going to Burp > Settings. Under the Tools tab, select Proxy.

Select and edit the proxy you want to use in the Proxy listeners section. In the Bind to address field, choose All interfaces, then click OK.

Next, let’s download the CA certificate. Click Import / Export CA Certificate. Under Export, select Certificate in DER format, then click Next. Enter a path where you want to save the file or use the Select File button to browse your folders. Finally, click Next.

Alright! Now that we’ve set up Burp Suite, let’s move on to our virtual device.

Command Line Tools

There’s one thing we need before proceeding — we must ensure that the required CLI tools are accessible in the terminal. To do that, add %LOCALAPPDATA%\Android\Sdk\platform-tools to your executable path.

If you’re using Mac or Linux, check your SDK installation directory.

Connecting to Burp Suite Proxy

Let’s start with the CA certificate. Open a terminal, then push the CA certificate to the emulator’s file system.

adb push cacert.der /sdcard

On the emulator, go to Settings > Security & privacy > More security & privacy > Encryption & credentials > Install a certificate > CA certificate. Click INSTALL ANYWAY.

Next, click the menu in the upper left corner, then select Android SDK built for x86_64. Locate and click cacert.der, which we pushed earlier. This will install the certificate under User Credentials.

Now, let’s set the proxy. Go to Settings > Network & internet > Internet > AndroidWifi. Click the pencil icon in the upper right corner. This will open the AndroidWifi settings.

Let’s click Advanced options, then select Manual in the Proxy field. In the Proxy hostname field, enter your PC’s IP address on the home network (in my case, 192.168.1.9). Then, in the Proxy port field, enter the port set in Burp Suite (9000 in my case). Finally, click Save.

Finally, let’s test the connection using the WebView Browser Tester.

Then view the captured traffic in Burp Suite.

What’s Next?

For me, it’s about continuing my side quest — Android application penetration testing. I want to learn how SSL pinning stops this trick in real tests. Thanks for reading, and I hope this helped!