Acquiring IoT mobile applications
The first step in assessing an IoT device's mobile application is acquiring and installing the app for the target platform. Usually, if an IoT device has an Android app, there is also an iOS app available as well. To install an application for Android, Google Play Store is used, which also shares basic information about the app. For iOS applications, Apple's App Store is used to install an app to an iDevice. However, the raw application binaries are not made available and cannot be obtained via the Play Store or App Store. The application binaries or packages are known as Android packages or APK, and iOS App Store Package Archive (IPA) for iOS. If you happen to be testing an application from a white box perspective, these binaries will be given to you without the need of exploring ways to obtain the app binaries. If you are testing from a black box perspective for research purposes, you may be wondering how we are going to get our hands on the application...