You're reading from Mobile App Reverse Engineering Get started with discovering, analyzing, and exploring the internals of Android and iOS apps

Product type Paperback

Published in May 2022

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781801073394

Length 166 pages

Edition 1st Edition

Languages

Tools

Android

Concepts

Reverse Engineering

Author (1):

Abhinav Mishra

View More author details

Table of Contents (13) Chapters

Preface

1. Section 1: Basics of Mobile App Reverse Engineering, Common Tools and Techniques, and Setting up the Environment

2. Chapter 1: Basics of Reverse Engineering – Understanding the Structure of Mobile Apps FREE CHAPTER

3. Chapter 2: Setting Up a Mobile App Reverse Engineering Environment Using Modern Tools

4. Section 2: Mobile Application Reverse Engineering Methodology and Approach

5. Chapter 3: Reverse Engineering an Android Application

6. Chapter 4: Reverse Engineering an iOS Application

7. Chapter 5: Reverse Engineering an iOS Application (Developed Using Swift)

8. Section 3: Automating Some Parts of the Reverse Engineering Process

9. Chapter 6: Open Source and Commercial Reverse Engineering Tools

10. Chapter 7: Automating the Reverse Engineering Process

11. Chapter 8: Conclusion

12. Other Books You May Enjoy

Automated static analysis of mobile applications

The first step during a black box penetration test is to gather as much information as possible about the target. In the case of a mobile application penetration test (black box), a static analysis of the application package (Android Application Package (APK) or iOS application archive (IPA)) is done to get a basic idea about the application, as well as to analyze it for some low-hanging vulnerabilities and missing security controls. Let's have a look at things that a static analysis tool can check on an application:

Extract details about the application from the application's manifest (for Android) or PLIST (for iOS) files.
Analyze the binary for protections such as Automatic Reference Counting (ARC), code signing, and Position Independent Executable (PIE).
Important Note
ARC is used for automatic memory management in iOS apps. This is done by handling the reference count of objects at the time of compilation...