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I want to install and simulate iOS applications and find their malware intentions. See if connects to an IP address, downloads something, API call logs and soo on... kind of everything it does on the system. Does iOS Simulator log this events, or is there any online project that does that. If not then I should do it from scratch, do you have any advice how to do this?I only have the application file, not the entire Xcode project.

ALL i have is a bunch of applications(not the projects) that i have to test. All i want is to run them and log their actions in an automated way. Just like running a windows application on a virtual machine and log api trace, internet connections, memory, registry, disk actions... IN AN AUTOMATED WAY.

Thank you</pre>
Posted
Updated 28-Dec-11 2:44am
v2

1 solution

You can easily track internet activity with any sort of packet sniffing tool. Here's a link to one way to do it:

http://blog.jerodsanto.net/2009/06/sniff-your-iphones-network-traffic/[^]

If all you have is the iOS application itself, you won't be able to run it on the iPhone "simulator" that comes with Xcode -- that only runs code that has been compiled for the simulator (x86 code), it doesn't run the acutal .ipa files that contain the ARM code.

If you are strictly worried about malware, on a non-jailbroken phone, the app will only run in the application sandbox -- there isn't much an application can do from within the sandbox that would be malicious. So tracking the internet activity should be enough.

You can also scan the app for api calls using either the techniques discussed here:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7031356/finding-private-api-call-terminatewithstatus[^]

Or using this utility:

http://www.chimpstudios.com/appscanner/[^]

NOTE: Static analysis of reverse engineered code might actually be a better method of determining malicious intent than any amount of simulation. Depending on what triggers the malicious code, you might never actually run the malicious payload when you run under a simulator.
 
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