Android 14 blocks all modification of system certificates, even as root

We've come a long way since then, steadily retreating from openness & user control of devices, and shifting towards a far more locked-down vendor-controlled world.

The next step of Android's evolution is Android 14 (API v34, codename Upside-Down Cake) and it takes more steps down that path. In this new release, the restrictions around certificate authority (CA) certificates become significantly tighter, and appear to make it impossible to modify the set of trusted certificates at all, even on fully rooted devices.

If you're an Android developer, tester, reverse engineer, or anybody else interested in directly controlling who your device trusts, this is going to create some new challenges.

The walls are slowly but surely closing in on Android.