Android Basic Security Testing
By now, you should have a basic understanding of the way Android apps are structured and deployed. In this chapter, we'll talk about setting up a security testing environment and describe basic testing processes you'll be using. This chapter is the foundation for the more detailed testing methods discussed in later chapters.
You can set up a fully functioning test environment on almost any machine running Windows, Linux, or Mac OS.
At the very least, you'll need Android Studio (which comes with the Android SDK) platform tools, an emulator, and an app to manage the various SDK versions and framework components. Android Studio also comes with an Android Virtual Device (AVD) Manager application for creating emulator images. Make sure that the newest SDK tools and platform tools packages are installed on your system.
In addition, you may want to complete your host setup by installing the Android NDK if you're planing to work with apps containing native libraries (it will be also relevant in the chapter "Tampering and Reverse Engineering on Android").
Local Android SDK installations are managed via Android Studio. Create an empty project in Android Studio and select Tools -> Android -> SDK Manager to open the SDK Manager GUI. The SDK Platforms tab is where you install SDKs for multiple API levels. Recent API levels are:
Android 9.0 (API level 28)
Android 8.1 (API level 27)
Android 8.0 (API level 26)
Android 7.1 (API level 25)
An overview of all Android codenames, their version number and API levels can be found in the Android Developer Documentation.
Installed SDKs are on the following paths:
Windows:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Android\sdk
MacOS:
/Users/<username>/Library/Android/sdk
Note: On Linux, you need to choose an SDK directory. /opt, /srv, and /usr/local are common choices.
The Android NDK contains prebuilt versions of the native compiler and toolchain. Both the GCC and Clang compilers have traditionally been supported, but active support for GCC ended with NDK revision 14. The device architecture and host OS determine the appropriate version. The prebuilt toolchains are in the toolchains directory of the NDK, which contains one subdirectory for each architecture.
Architecture | Toolchain name |
ARM-based | arm-linux-androideabi-<gcc-version> |
x86-based | x86-<gcc-version> |
MIPS-based | mipsel-linux-android-<gcc-version> |
ARM64-based | aarch64-linux-android-<gcc-version> |
X86-64-based | x86_64-<gcc-version> |
MIPS64-based | mips64el-linux-android-<gcc-version> |
Besides picking the right architecture, you need to specify the correct sysroot for the native API level you want to target. The sysroot is a directory that contains the system headers and libraries for your target. Native APIs vary by Android API level. Possible sysroots for each Android API level are in $NDK/platforms/. Each API level directory contains subdirectories for the various CPUs and architectures.
One possibility for setting up the build system is exporting the compiler path and necessary flags as environment variables. To make things easier, however, the NDK allows you to create a so-called standalone toolchain—a "temporary" toolchain that incorporates the required settings.
To set up a standalone toolchain, download the latest stable version of the NDK. Extract the ZIP file, change into the NDK root directory, and run the following command:
$ ./build/tools/make_standalone_toolchain.py --arch arm --api 24 --install-dir /tmp/android-7-toolchain
This creates a standalone toolchain for Android 7.0 (API level 24) in the directory /tmp/android-7-toolchain. For convenience, you can export an environment variable that points to your toolchain directory, (we'll be using this in the examples). Run the following command or add it to your .bash_profile or other startup script:
$ export TOOLCHAIN=/tmp/android-7-toolchain
For dynamic analysis, you'll need an Android device to run the target app on. In principle, you can test without a real Android device and use only the emulator. However, apps execute quite slowly on a emulator, and simulators may not give realistic results. Testing on a real device makes for a smoother process and a more realistic environment. On the other hand, emulators allow you to easily change SDK versions or create multiple devices. A full overview of the pros and cons of each approach is listed in the table below.
Property | Physical | Emulator/Simulator |
Ability to restore | Softbricks are always possible, but new firmware can typically still be flashed. Hardbricks are very rare. | Emulators can crash or become corrupt, but a new one can be created or a snapshot can be restored. |
Reset | Can be restored to factory settings or reflashed. | Emulators can be deleted and recreated. |
Snapshots | Not possible. | Supported, great for malware analysis. |
Speed | Much faster than emulators. | Typically slow, but improvements are being made. |
Cost | Typically start at $200 for a usable device. You may require different devices, such as one with or without a biometric sensor. | Both free and commercial solutions exist. |
Ease of rooting | Highly dependent on the device. | Typically rooted by default. |
Ease of emulator detection | It's not an emulator, so emulator checks are not applicable. | Many artefacts will exist, making it easy to detect that the app is running in an emulator. |
Ease of root detection | Easier to hide root, as many root detection algorithms check for emulator properties. With Magisk Systemless root it's nearly impossible to detect. | Emulators will almost always trigger root detection algorithms due to the fact that they are built for testing with many artefacts that can be found. |
Hardware interaction | Easy interaction through Bluetooth, NFC, 4G, WiFi, biometrics, camera, GPS, gyroscope, ... | Usually fairly limited, with emulated hardware input (e.g. random GPS coordinates) |
API level support | Depends on the device and the community. Active communities will keep distributing updated versions (e.g. LineageOS), while less popular devices may only receive a few updates. Switching between versions requires flashing the device, a tedious process. | Always supports the latest versions, including beta releases. Emulators containing specific API levels can easily be downloaded and launched. |
Native library support | Native libraries are usually built for ARM devices, so they will work on a physical device. | Some emulators run on x86 CPUs, so they may not be able to run packaged native libraries. |
Malware danger | Malware samples can infect a device, but if you can clear out the device storage and flash a clean firmware, thereby restoring it to factory settings, this should not be a problem. Be aware that there are malware samples that try to exploit the USB bridge. | Malware samples can infect an emulator, but the emulator can simply be removed and recreated. It is also possible to create snapshots and compare different snapshots to help in malware analysis. Be aware that there are malware proofs of concept which try to attack the hypervisor. |
Almost any physical device can be used for testing, but there are a few considerations to be made. First, the device needs to be rootable. This is typically either done through an exploit, or through an unlocked bootloader. Exploits are not always available, and the bootloader may be locked permanently, or it may only be unlocked once the carrier contract has been terminated.
The best candidates are flagship Google pixel devices built for developers. These devices typically come with an unlockable bootloader, opensource firmware, kernel, radio available online and official OS source code. The developer communities prefer Google devices as the OS is closest to the android open source project. These devices generally have the longest support windows with 2 years of OS updates and 1 year of security updates after that.
Alternatively, Google's Android One project contains devices that will receive the same support windows (2 years of OS updates, 1 year of security updates) and have near-stock experiences. While it was originally started as a project for low-end devices, the program has evolved to include mid-range and high-end smartphones, many of which are actively supported by the modding community.
Devices that are supported by the LineageOS project are also very good candidates for test devices. They have an active community, easy to follow flashing and rooting instructions and the latest Android versions are typically quickly available as a Lineage installation. LineageOS also continues support for new Android versions long after the OEM has stopped distributing updates.
When working with an Android physical device, you'll want to enable Developer Mode and USB debugging on the device in order to use the ADB debugging interface. Since Android 4.2 (API level 16), the Developer options sub menu in the Settings app is hidden by default. To activate it, tap the Build number section of the About phone view seven times. Note that the build number field's location varies slightly by device—for example, on LG Phones, it is under About phone -> Software information. Once you have done this, Developer options will be shown at bottom of the Settings menu. Once developer options are activated, you can enable debugging with the USB debugging switch.
Multiple emulators exist, once again with their own strengths and weaknesses:
Free emulators:
Android Virtual Device (AVD) - The official android emulator, distributed with Android Studio.
Android X86 - An x86 port of the Android code base
Commercial emulators:
Genymotion - Mature emulator with many features, both as local and cloud-based solution. Free version available for non-commercial use.
Corellium - Offers custom device virtualization through a cloud-based or on-prem solution.
Although there exist several free Android emulators, we recommend using AVD as it provides enhanced features appropriate for testing your app compared to the others. In the remainder of this guide, we will use the official AVD to perform tests.
AVD supports some hardware emulation, such as GPS, SMS and motion sensors.
You can either start an Android Virtual Device (AVD) by using the AVD Manager in Android Studio or start the AVD manager from the command line with the android command, which is found in the tools directory of the Android SDK:
$ ./android avd
Several tools and VMs that can be used to test an app within an emulator environment are available:
Please also verify the "Testing Tools" chapter at the end of this book.
Rooting (i.e., modifying the OS so that you can run commands as the root user) is recommended for testing on a real device. This gives you full control over the operating system and allows you to bypass restrictions such as app sandboxing. These privileges in turn allow you to use techniques like code injection and function hooking more easily.
Note that rooting is risky, and three main consequences need to be clarified before you proceed. Rooting can have the following negative effects:
voiding the device warranty (always check the manufacturer's policy before taking any action)
"bricking" the device, i.e., rendering it inoperable and unusable
creating additional security risks (because built-in exploit mitigations are often removed)
You should not root a personal device that you store your private information on. We recommend getting a cheap, dedicated test device instead. Many older devices, such as Google's Nexus series, can run the newest Android versions and are perfectly fine for testing.
You need to understand that rooting your device is ultimately YOUR decision and that OWASP shall in no way be held responsible for any damage. If you're uncertain, seek expert advice before starting the rooting process.
Which Mobiles Can Be Rooted
Virtually any Android mobile can be rooted. Commercial versions of Android OS (which are Linux OS evolutions at the kernel level) are optimized for the mobile world. Some features have been removed or disabled for these versions, for example, non-privileged users' ability to become the 'root' user (who has elevated privileges). Rooting a phone means allowing users to become the root user, e.g., adding a standard Linux executable called su, which is used to change to another user account.
To root a mobile device, first unlock its boot loader. The unlocking procedure depends on the device manufacturer. However, for practical reasons, rooting some mobile devices is more popular than rooting others, particularly when it comes to security testing: devices created by Google and manufactured by companies like Samsung, LG, and Motorola are among the most popular, particularly because they are used by many developers. The device warranty is not nullified when the boot loader is unlocked and Google provides many tools to support the root itself. A curated list of guides for rooting all major brand devices is posted on the XDA forums.
Rooting with Magisk
Magisk ("Magic Mask") is one way to root your Android device. It's specialty lies in the way the modifications on the system are performed. While other rooting tools alter the actual data on the system partition, Magisk does not (which is called "systemless"). This enables a way to hide the modifications from root-sensitive applications (e.g. for banking or games) and allows using the official Android OTA upgrades without the need to unroot the device beforehand.
You can get familiar with Magisk reading the official documentation on GitHub. If you don't have Magisk installed, you can find installation instructions in the documentation. If you use an official Android version and plan to upgrade it, Magisk provides a tutorial on GitHub.
Furthermore, developers can use the power of Magisk to create custom modules and submit them to the official Magisk Modules repository. Submitted modules can then be installed inside the Magisk Manager application. One of these installable modules is a systemless version of the famous Xposed Framework (available for SDK versions up to 27).
Root Detection
An extensive list of root detection methods is presented in the "Testing Anti-Reversing Defenses on Android" chapter.
For a typical mobile app security build, you'll usually want to test a debug build with root detection disabled. If such a build is not available for testing, you can disable root detection in a variety of ways that will be introduced later in this book.
There are many tools and frameworks used throughout this guide to assess the security of Android applications. In the next sections, you will learn more about some of the commands and interesting use cases. Please check the official documentation for installation instructions of the following tools/APKs:
APK Extractor: App to extract APKs without root.
Frida server: Server for Frida, the dynamic instrumentation toolkit for developers, reverse-engineers, and security researchers. See Frida section below for more information.
Drozer agent: Agent for drozer, the framework that allows you to search for security vulnerabilities in apps and devices. See Drozer section below for more information.
Xposed is a "framework for modules that can change the behavior of the system and apps without touching any APKs.". Technically, it is an extended version of Zygote that exports APIs for running Java code when a new process is started. Running Java code in the context of the newly instantiated app makes it possible to resolve, hook, and override Java methods belonging to the app. Xposed uses reflection to examine and modify the running app. Changes are applied in memory and persist only during the process' runtime since the application binaries are not modified.
To use Xposed, you need to first install the Xposed framework on a rooted device as explained on XDA-Developers Xposed framework hub. Modules can be installed through the Xposed Installer app, and they can be toggled on and off through the GUI.
Note: given that a plain installation of the Xposed framework is easily detected with SafetyNet, we recommend using Magisk to install Xposed. This way, applications with SafetyNet attestation should have a higher chance of being testable with Xposed modules.
Xposed has been compared to Frida. When you run Frida server on a rooted device, you will end up with a similarly effective setup. Both frameworks deliver a lot of value when you want to do dynamic instrumentation. When Frida crashes the app, you can try something similar with Xposed. Next, similar to the abundance of Frida scripts, you can easily use one of the many modules that come with Xposed, such as the earlier discussed module to bypass SSL pinning (JustTrustMe and SSLUnpinning). Xposed includes other modules, such as Inspeckage which allow you to do more in depth application testing as well. On top of that, you can create your own modules as well to patch often used security mechanisms of Android applications.
Xposed can also be installed on an emulator through the following script:
#!/bin/shecho "Start your emulator with 'emulator -avd NAMEOFX86A8.0 -writable-system -selinux permissive -wipe-data'"adb root && adb remountadb install SuperSU\ v2.79.apk #binary can be downloaded from http://www.supersu.com/downloadadb push root_avd-master/SuperSU/x86/su /system/xbin/suadb shell chmod 0755 /system/xbin/suadb shell setenforce 0adb shell su --installadb shell su --daemon&adb push busybox /data/busybox #binary can be downloaded from https://busybox.net/# adb shell "mount -o remount,rw /system && mv /data/busybox /system/bin/busybox && chmod 755 /system/bin/busybox && /system/bin/busybox --install /system/bin"adb shell chmod 755 /data/busyboxadb shell 'sh -c "./data/busybox --install /data"'adb shell 'sh -c "mkdir /data/xposed"'adb push xposed8.zip /data/xposed/xposed.zip #can be downloaded from https://dl-xda.xposed.info/framework/adb shell chmod 0755 /data/xposedadb shell 'sh -c "./data/unzip /data/xposed/xposed.zip -d /data/xposed/"'adb shell 'sh -c "cp /data/xposed/xposed/META-INF/com/google/android/*.* /data/xposed/xposed/"'echo "Now adb shell and do 'su', next: go to ./data/xposed/xposed, make flash-script.sh executable and run it in that directory after running SUperSU"echo "Next, restart emulator"echo "Next, adb install XposedInstaller_3.1.5.apk"echo "Next, run installer and then adb reboot"echo "Want to use it again? Start your emulator with 'emulator -avd NAMEOFX86A8.0 -writable-system -selinux permissive'"
Please note that Xposed, as of early 2019, does not work on Android 9 (API level 28) yet.
In order to analyze Android apps, you should install the following tools on your host computer. Please check the official documentation for installation instructions of the following tools/frameworks. We'll be referring to them throughout the guide.
adb (Android Debug Bridge), shipped with the Android SDK, bridges the gap between your local development environment and a connected Android device. You'll usually leverage it to test apps on the emulator or a connected device via USB or WiFi. Use the adb devices command to list the connected devices and execute it with the -l argument to retrieve more details on them.
$ adb devices -lList of devices attached090c285c0b97f748 device usb:1-1 product:razor model:Nexus_7 device:floemulator-5554 device product:sdk_google_phone_x86 model:Android_SDK_built_for_x86 device:generic_x86 transport_id:1
adb provides other useful commands such as adb shell to start an interactive shell on a target and adb forward to forward traffic on a specific host port to a different port on a connect device.
$ adb forward tcp:<host port> tcp:<device port>
$ adb -s emulator-5554 shellroot@generic_x86:/ # lsacctcachechargerconfig...
You'll come across different use cases on how you can use adb commands when testing later in this book. Note that you must define the serialnummer of the target device with the -s argument (as shown by the previous code snippet) in case you have multiple devices connected.
Angr is a Python framework for analyzing binaries. It is useful for both static and dynamic symbolic ("concolic") analysis. In other words: given a binary and a requested state, Angr will try to get to that state, using formal methods (a technique used for static code analysis) to find a path, as well as brute forcing. Using angr to get to the requested state is often much faster than taking manual steps for debugging and searching the path towards the required state. Angr operates on the VEX intermediate language and comes with a loader for ELF/ARM binaries, so it is perfect for dealing with native code, such as native Android binaries.
Angr allows for disassembly, program instrumentation, symbolic execution, control-flow analysis, data-dependency analysis, decompilation and more, given a large set of plugins.
Since version 8, Angr is based on Python 3, and can be installed with pip on *nix operating systems, macOS and Windows:
$ pip install angr
Some of angr's dependencies contain forked versions of the Python modules Z3 and PyVEX, which would overwrite the original versions. If you're using those modules for anything else, you should create a dedicated virtual environment with Virtualenv. Alternatively, you can always use the provided docker container. See the installation guide for more details.
Comprehensive documentation, including an installation guide, tutorials, and usage examples are available on Angr's Gitbooks page. A complete API reference is also available.
You can use angr from a Python REPL - such as iPython - or script your approaches. Although angr has a bit of a steep learning curve, we do recommend using it when you want to brute force your way to a given state of an executable. Please see the "Symbolic Execution" section of the "Reverse Engineering and Tampering" chapter as a great example on how this can work.
Apktool is used to unpack Android app packages (APKs). Simply unzipping APKs with the standard unzip utility leaves some files unreadable. AndroidManifest.xml is encoded into binary XML format which isn’t readable with a text editor. Also, the app resources are still packaged into a single archive file.
When run with default command line flags, apktool automatically decodes the Android Manifest file to text-based XML format and extracts the file resources (it also disassembles the .DEX files to smali code – a feature that we’ll revisit later in this book).
$ apktool d base.apkI: Using Apktool 2.1.0 on base.apkI: Loading resource table...I: Decoding AndroidManifest.xml with resources...I: Loading resource table from file: /Users/sven/Library/apktool/framework/1.apkI: Regular manifest package...I: Decoding file-resources...I: Decoding values */* XMLs...I: Baksmaling classes.dex...I: Copying assets and libs...I: Copying unknown files...I: Copying original files...$ cd base$ ls -alhtotal 32drwxr-xr-x 9 sven staff 306B Dec 5 16:29 .drwxr-xr-x 5 sven staff 170B Dec 5 16:29 ..-rw-r--r-- 1 sven staff 10K Dec 5 16:29 AndroidManifest.xml-rw-r--r-- 1 sven staff 401B Dec 5 16:29 apktool.ymldrwxr-xr-x 6 sven staff 204B Dec 5 16:29 assetsdrwxr-xr-x 3 sven staff 102B Dec 5 16:29 libdrwxr-xr-x 4 sven staff 136B Dec 5 16:29 originaldrwxr-xr-x 131 sven staff 4.3K Dec 5 16:29 resdrwxr-xr-x 9 sven staff 306B Dec 5 16:29 smali
The unpacked files are:
AndroidManifest.xml: The decoded Android Manifest file, which can be opened and edited in a text editor.
apktool.yml: file containing information about the output of apktool
original: folder containing the MANIFEST.MF file, which contains information about the files contained in the JAR file
res: directory containing the app’s resources
smali: directory containing the disassembled Dalvik bytecode.
You can also use apktool to repackage decoded resources back to binary APK/JAR. See the section "Exploring the App Package" later on this chapter and section "Repackaging" in the chapter "Tampering and Reverse Engineering on Android" for more information and practical examples.
Apkx is a Python wrapper to popular free DEX converters and Java decompilers. It automates the extraction, conversion, and decompilation of APKs. Install it as follows:
$ git clone https://github.com/b-mueller/apkx$ cd apkx$ sudo ./install.sh
This should copy apkx to /usr/local/bin. See section "Decompiling Java Code" of the "Reverse Engineering and Tampering" chapter for more information about usage.
Burp Suite is an integrated platform for security testing mobile and web applications. Its tools work together seamlessly to support the entire testing process, from initial mapping and analysis of attack surfaces to finding and exploiting security vulnerabilities. Burp Proxy operates as a web proxy server for Burp Suite, which is positioned as a man-in-the-middle between the browser and web server(s). Burp Suite allows you to intercept, inspect, and modify incoming and outgoing raw HTTP traffic.
Setting up Burp to proxy your traffic is pretty straightforward. We assume that you have an iOS device and workstation connected to a Wi-Fi network that permits client-to-client traffic.
PortSwigger provides a good tutorial on setting up an Android device to work with Burp and a [tutorial on installing Burp's CA certificate to an Android device](https://support.portswigger.net/customer/portal/articles/1841102-installing-burp-s-ca-certificate-in-an-android-device "Installing Burp's CA Certificate in an Android Device").
Drozer is an Android security assessment framework that allows you to search for security vulnerabilities in apps and devices by assuming the role of a third-party app interacting with the other application's IPC endpoints and the underlying OS.
The advantage of using Drozer consists on its ability to automate several tasks and that it can be expanded through modules. The modules are very helpful and they cover different categories including a scanner category that allows you to scan for known defects with a simple command such as the module scanner.provider.injection which detects SQL injections in content providers in all the apps installed in the system. Without drozer, simple tasks such as listing the app's permissions require several steps that include decompiling the APK and manually analyzing the results.
Installing Drozer
You can refer to drozer GitHub page (for Linux and Windows, for macOS please refer to this blog post) and the drozer website for prerequisites and installation instructions.
The installation instructions for drozer on Unix, Linux and Windows are explained in the drozer Github page. For macOS this blog post will be demonstrating all installation instructions.
Using Drozer
Before you can start using drozer, you'll also need the drozer agent that runs on the Android device itself. Download the latest drozer agent from the releases page and install it with adb install drozer.apk.
Once the setup is completed you can start a session to an emulator or a device connected per USB by running adb forward tcp:31415 tcp:31415 and drozer console connect. See the full instructions here.
Now you are ready to begin analyzing apps. A good first step is to enumerate the attack surface of an app which can be done easily with the following command:
$ dz> run app.package.attacksurface <package>
Again, without drozer this would have required several steps. The module app.package.attacksurface lists activities, broadcast receivers, content providers and services that are exported, hence, they are public and can be accessed through other apps. Once we have identified our attack surface, we can interact with the IPC endpoints through drozer without having to write a separate standalone app as it would be required for certain tasks such as communicating with a content provider.
For example, if the app has an exported Activity that leaks sensitive information we can invoke it with the Drozer module app.activity.start:
$ dz> run app.activity.start --component <package> <component name>
This previous command will start the activity, hopefully leaking some sensitive information. Drozer has modules for every type of IPC mechanism. Download InsecureBankv2 if you would like to try the modules with an intentionally vulnerable application that illustrates common problems related to IPC endpoints. Pay close attention to the modules in the scanner category as they are very helpful automatically detecting vulnerabilities even in system packages, specially if you are using a ROM provided by your cellphone company. Even SQL injection vulnerabilities in system packages by Google have been identified in the past with drozer.
Other Drozer commands
Here's a non-exhaustive list of commands you can use to start exploring on Android:
# List all the installed packages$ dz> run app.package.list# Find the package name of a specific app$ dz> run app.package.list –f (string to be searched)# See basic information$ dz> run app.package.info –a (package name)# Identify the exported application components$ dz> run app.package.attacksurface (package name)# Identify the list of exported Activities$ dz> run app.activity.info -a (package name)# Launch the exported Activities$ dz> run app.activity.start --component (package name) (component name)# Identify the list of exported Broadcast receivers$ dz> run app.broadcast.info -a (package name)# Send a message to a Broadcast receiver$ dz> run app.broadcast.send --action (broadcast receiver name) -- extra (number of arguments)# Detect SQL injections in content providers$ dz> run scanner.provider.injection -a (package name)
Other Drozer resources
Other resources where you might find useful information are:
[Command Reference](https://mobiletools.mwrinfosecurity.com/Command-Reference/ "drozer's Command Reference")
Frida is a free and open-source dynamic code instrumentation toolkit that lets you execute snippets of JavaScript into your native apps. It was already introduced in the chapter "Tampering and Reverse Engineering" of the general testing guide.
Frida supports interaction with the Android Java runtime though the Java API. You'll be able to hook and call both Java and native functions inside the process and its native libraries. Your JavaScript snippets have full access to memory, e.g. to read and/or write any structured data.
Here are some tasks that Frida APIs offers and are relevant or exclusive on Android:
Instantiate Java objects and call static and non-static class methods (Java API).
Replace Java method implementations (Java API).
Enumerate live instances of specific classes by scanning the Java heap (Java API).
Scan process memory for occurrences of a string (Memory API).
Intercept native function calls to run your own code at function entry and exit (Interceptor API).
Remember that on Android, you can also benefit from the built-in tools provided when installing Frida, that includes the Frida CLI (frida), frida-ps, frida-ls-devices and frida-trace, to name some of them.
Frida is often compared to Xposed, however this comparison is far from fair as both frameworks were designed with different goals in mind. This is important to understand as an app security tester so that you can know which framework to use in which situation:
Frida is standalone, all you need is to run the frida-server binary from a known location in your target Android device (see "Installing Frida" below). This means that, in contrast to Xposed, it is not deep installed in the target OS.
Reversing an app is an iterative process. As a consequence of the previous point, you obtain a shorter feedback loop when testing as you don't need to (soft) reboot to apply or simply update your hooks. So you might prefer to use Xposed when implementing more permanent hooks.
You may inject and update your Frida JavaScript code on the fly at any point during the runtime of your process (similarly to Cycript on iOS). This way you can perform the so-called early instrumentation by letting Frida spawn your app or you may prefer to attach to a running app that you might have brought to a certain state.
Frida is able to handle both Java as well as native code (JNI), allowing you to modify both of them. This is unfortunately a limitation of Xposed which lacks of native code support.
Note that Xposed, as of early 2019, does not work on Android 9 (API level 28) yet.
Installing Frida
To install Frida locally, simply run:
$ pip install frida-tools
Or refer to the installation page for more details.
The next step is to set up Frida on your Android device:
If your device is not rooted, you can also use Frida, please refer to section "Dynamic Analysis on Non-Rooted Devices" of the "Reverse Engineering and Tampering" chapter.
If you have a rooted device, simply follow the official instructions or follow the hints below.
We assume a rooted device here unless otherwise noted. Download the frida-server binary from the Frida releases page. Make sure that you download the right frida-server binary for the architecture of your Android device or emulator: x86, x86_64, arm or arm64. Make sure that the server version (at least the major version number) matches the version of your local Frida installation. PyPI usually installs the latest version of Frida. If you're unsure which version is installed, you can check with the Frida command line tool:
$ frida --version
Or you can run the following command to automatically detect Frida version and download the right frida-server binary:
$ wget https://github.com/frida/frida/releases/download/$(frida --version)/frida-server-$(frida --version)-android-arm.xz
Copy frida-server to the device and run it:
$ adb push frida-server /data/local/tmp/$ adb shell "chmod 755 /data/local/tmp/frida-server"$ adb shell "su -c /data/local/tmp/frida-server &"
Using Frida on Android
With frida-server running, you should now be able to get a list of running processes with the following command (use the -U option to indicate Frida to use a connected USB devices or emulator):
$ frida-ps -UPID Name----- --------------------------------------------------------------276 adbd956 android.process.media198 bridgemgrd30692 com.android.chrome30774 com.android.chrome:privileged_process030747 com.android.chrome:sandboxed30834 com.android.chrome:sandboxed3059 com.android.nfc1526 com.android.phone17104 com.android.settings1302 com.android.systemui(...)
Or restrict the list with the -Uai flag combination to get all apps (-a) currently installed (-i) on the connected USB device (-U):
$ frida-ps -UaiPID Name Identifier----- ---------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------766 Android System android30692 Chrome com.android.chrome3520 Contacts Storage com.android.providers.contacts- Uncrackable1 sg.vantagepoint.uncrackable1- drozer Agent com.mwr.dz
This will show the names and identifiers of all apps, if they are currently running it will also show their PIDs. Search for your app in the list and take a note of the PID or its name/identifier. From now on you'll refer to your app by using one of them. A recommendation is to use the identifiers, as the PIDs will change on each run of the app. For example let's take com.android.chrome. You can use this string now on all Frida tools, e.g. on the Frida CLI, on frida-trace or from a Python script.
Tracing Native Libraries with frida-trace
To trace specific (low-level) library calls, you can use the frida-trace command line tool:
$ frida-trace -U com.android.chrome -i "open"
This generates a little JavaScript in __handlers__/libc.so/open.js, which Frida injects into the process. The script traces all calls to the open function in libc.so. You can modify the generated script according to your needs with Frida JavaScript API.
Unfortunately tracing high-level methods of Java classes is not yet supported (but might be in the future).
Frida CLI and the Java API
Use the Frida CLI tool (frida) to work with Frida interactively. It hooks into a process and gives you a command line interface to Frida's API.
$ frida -U com.android.chrome
With the -l option, you can also use the Frida CLI to load scripts , e.g., to load myscript.js:
$ frida -U -l myscript.js com.android.chrome
Frida also provides a Java API, which is especially helpful for dealing with Android apps. It lets you work with Java classes and objects directly. Here is a script to overwrite the onResume function of an Activity class:
Java.perform(function () {var Activity = Java.use("android.app.Activity");Activity.onResume.implementation = function () {console.log("[*] onResume() got called!");this.onResume();};});
The above script calls Java.perform to make sure that your code gets executed in the context of the Java VM. It instantiates a wrapper for the android.app.Activity class via Java.use and overwrites the onResume function. The new onResume function implementation prints a notice to the console and calls the original onResume method by invoking this.onResume every time an activity is resumed in the app.
Frida also lets you search for and work with instantiated objects that are on the heap. The following script searches for instances of android.view.View objects and calls their toString method. The result is printed to the console:
setImmediate(function() {console.log("[*] Starting script");Java.perform(function () {Java.choose("android.view.View", {"onMatch":function(instance){console.log("[*] Instance found: " + instance.toString());},"onComplete":function() {console.log("[*] Finished heap search")}});});});
The output would look like this:
[*] Starting script[*] Instance found: android.view.View{7ccea78 G.ED..... ......ID 0,0-0,0 #7f0c01fc app:id/action_bar_black_background}[*] Instance found: android.view.View{2809551 V.ED..... ........ 0,1731-0,1731 #7f0c01ff app:id/menu_anchor_stub}[*] Instance found: android.view.View{be471b6 G.ED..... ......I. 0,0-0,0 #7f0c01f5 app:id/location_bar_verbose_status_separator}[*] Instance found: android.view.View{3ae0eb7 V.ED..... ........ 0,0-1080,63 #102002f android:id/statusBarBackground}[*] Finished heap search
You can also use Java's reflection capabilities. To list the public methods of the android.view.View class, you could create a wrapper for this class in Frida and call getMethods from the wrapper's class property:
Java.perform(function () {var view = Java.use("android.view.View");var methods = view.class.getMethods();for(var i = 0; i < methods.length; i++) {console.log(methods[i].toString());}});
This will print a very long list of methods to the terminal:
public boolean android.view.View.canResolveLayoutDirection()public boolean android.view.View.canResolveTextAlignment()public boolean android.view.View.canResolveTextDirection()public boolean android.view.View.canScrollHorizontally(int)public boolean android.view.View.canScrollVertically(int)public final void android.view.View.cancelDragAndDrop()public void android.view.View.cancelLongPress()public final void android.view.View.cancelPendingInputEvents()...
Frida Bindings
In order to extend the scripting experience, Frida offers bindings to programming languages such as Python, C, NodeJS, and Swift.
Taking Python as an example, the first thing to note is that no further installation steps are required. Start your Python script with import frida and you're ready to go. See the following script that simply runs the previous JavaScript snippet:
# frida_python.pyimport fridasession = frida.get_usb_device().attach('com.android.chrome')source = """Java.perform(function () {var view = Java.use("android.view.View");var methods = view.class.getMethods();for(var i = 0; i < methods.length; i++) {console.log(methods[i].toString());}});"""script = session.create_script(source)script.load()session.detach()
In this case, running the Python script (python3 frida_python.py) has the same result as the previous example: it will print all methods of the android.view.View class to the terminal. However, you might want to work with that data from Python. Using send instead of console.log will send data in JSON format from JavaScript to Python. Please read the comments in the example below:
# python3 frida_python_send.pyimport fridasession = frida.get_usb_device().attach('com.android.chrome')# 1. we want to store method names inside a listandroid_view_methods = []source = """Java.perform(function () {var view = Java.use("android.view.View");var methods = view.class.getMethods();for(var i = 0; i < methods.length; i++) {send(methods[i].toString());}});"""script = session.create_script(source)# 2. this is a callback function, only method names containing "Text" will be appended to the listdef on_message(message, data):if "Text" in message['payload']:android_view_methods.append(message['payload'])# 3. we tell the script to run our callback each time a message is receivedscript.on('message', on_message)script.load()# 4. we do something with the collected data, in this case we just print itfor method in android_view_methods:print(method)session.detach()
This effectively filters the methods and prints only the ones containing the string "Text":
$ python3 frida_python_send.pypublic boolean android.view.View.canResolveTextAlignment()public boolean android.view.View.canResolveTextDirection()public void android.view.View.setTextAlignment(int)public void android.view.View.setTextDirection(int)public void android.view.View.setTooltipText(java.lang.CharSequence)...
In the end, it is up to you to decide where would you like to work with the data. Sometimes it will be more convenient to do it from JavaScript and in other cases Python will be the best choice. Of course you can also send messages from Python to JavaScript by using script.post. Refer to the Frida docs for more information about sending and receiving messages.
Magisk ("Magic Mask") is one way to root your Android device. It's specialty lies in the way the modifications on the system are performed. While other rooting tools alter the actual data on the system partition, Magisk does not (which is called "systemless"). This enables a way to hide the modifications from root-sensitive applications (e.g. for banking or games) and allows using the official Android OTA upgrades without the need to unroot the device beforehand.
You can get familiar with Magisk reading the official documentation on GitHub. If you don't have Magisk installed, you can find installation instructions in the documentation. If you use an official Android version and plan to upgrade it, Magisk provides a tutorial on GitHub.
Learn more about rooting your device with Magisk.
MobSF is an automated, all-in-one mobile application pentesting framework that also supports Android APK files. The easiest way of getting MobSF started is via Docker.
$ docker pull opensecurity/mobile-security-framework-mobsf$ docker run -it -p 8000:8000 opensecurity/mobile-security-framework-mobsf:latest
Or install and start it locally on your host computer by running:
# Setupgit clone https://github.com/MobSF/Mobile-Security-Framework-MobSF.gitcd Mobile-Security-Framework-MobSF./setup.sh # For Linux and Macsetup.bat # For Windows# Installation process./run.sh # For Linux and Macrun.bat # For Windows
Once you have MobSF up and running you can open it in your browser by navigating to http://127.0.0.1:8000. Simply drag the APK you want to analyze into the upload area and MobSF will start its job.
After MobSF is done with its analysis, you will receive a one-page overview of all the tests that were executed. The page is split up into multiple sections giving some first hints on the attack surface of the application.
The following is displayed:
Basic information about the app and its binary file.
Some options to:
View the
AndroidManifest.xmlfile.View the IPC components of the app.
Signer certificate.
App permissions.
A security analysis showing known defects e.g. if the app backups are enabled.
List of libraries used by the app binary and list of all files inside the unzipped APK.
Malware analysis that checks for malicious URLs.
Refer to MobSF documentation for more details.
Objection is a "runtime mobile exploration toolkit, powered by Frida". Its main goal is to allow security testing on non-rooted devices through an intuitive interface.
Objection achieves this goal by providing you with the tools to easily inject the Frida gadget into an application by repackaging it. This way, you can deploy the repackaged app to the non-rooted device by sideloading it and interact with the application as explained in the previous section.
However, Objection also provides a REPL that allows you to interact with the application, giving you the ability to perform any action that the application can perform. A full list of the features of Objection can be found on the project's homepage, but here are a few interesting ones:
Repackage applications to include the Frida gadget
Disable SSL pinning for popular methods
Access application storage to download or upload files
Execute custom Frida scripts
List the Activities, Services and Broadcast receivers
Start Activities
The ability to perform advanced dynamic analysis on non-rooted devices is one of the features that makes Objection incredibly useful. An application may contain advanced RASP controls which detect your rooting method and injecting a frida-gadget may be the easiest way to bypass those controls. Furthermore, the included Frida scripts make it very easy to quickly analyze an application, or get around basic security controls.
Finally, in case you do have access to a rooted device, Objection can connect directly to the running Frida server to provide all its functionality without needing to repackage the application.
Installing Objection
Objection can be installed through pip as described on Objection's Wiki.
$ pip3 install objection
If your device is jailbroken, you are now ready to interact with any application running on the device and you can skip to the "Using Objection" section below.
However, if you want to test on a non-rooted device, you will first need to include the Frida gadget in the application. The Objection Wiki describes the needed steps in detail, but after making the right preparations, you'll be able to patch an APK by calling the objection command:
$ objection patchapk --source app-release.apk
The patched application then needs to be installed using adb, as explained in "Basic Testing Operations - Installing Apps".
Using Objection
Starting up Objection depends on whether you've patched the APK or whether you are using a rooted device running Frida-server. For running a patched APK, objection will automatically find any attached devices and search for a listening Frida gadget. However, when using frida-server, you need to explicitly tell frida-server which application you want to analyze.
# Connecting to a patched APKobjection explore# Find the correct name using frida-ps$ frida-ps -Ua | grep -i telegram30268 Telegram org.telegram.messenger# Connecting to the Telegram app through Frida-server$ objection --gadget="org.telegram.messenger" explore
Once you are in the Objection REPL, you can execute any of the available commands. Below is an overview of some of the most useful ones:
# Show the different storage locations belonging to the app$ env# Disable popular ssl pinning methods$ android sslpinning disable# List items in the keystore$ android keystore list# Try to circumvent root detection$ android root disable
More information on using the Objection REPL can be found on the Objection Wiki
radare2 (r2) is a popular open source reverse engineering framework for disassembling, debugging, patching and analyzing binaries that is scriptable and supports many architectures and file formats including Android/iOS apps. For Android, Dalvik DEX (odex, multidex), ELF (executables, .so, ART) and Java (JNI and Java classes) are supported. It also contains several useful scripts that can help you during mobile application analysis as it offers low level disassembling and safe static analysis that comes in handy when traditional tools fail.
radare2 implements a rich command line interface (CLI) where you can perform the mentioned tasks. However, if you're not really comfortable using the CLI for reverse engineering you may want to consider using the Web UI (via the -H flag) or the even more convenient Qt and C++ GUI version called Cutter. Do keep in mind that the CLI, and more concretely its Visual Mode and its scripting capabilities (r2pipe), are the core of radare2's power and it's definitely worth learning how to use it.
Installing radare2
Please refer to radare2's official installation instructions. We highly recommend to always install radare2 from the GitHub version instead of via common package managers such as APT. Radare2 is in very active development, which means that third party repositories are often outdated.
Using radare2
The radare2 framework comprises a set of small utilities that can be used from the r2 shell or independently as CLI tools. These utilities include rabin2, rasm2, rahash2, radiff2, rafind2, ragg2, rarun2, rax2, and of course r2, which is the main one.
For example, you can use rafind2 to read strings directly from an encoded Android Manifest (AndroidManifest.xml):
# Permissions$ rafind2 -ZS permission AndroidManifest.xml# Activities$ rafind2 -ZS activity AndroidManifest.xml# Content Providers$ rafind2 -ZS provider AndroidManifest.xml# Services$ rafind2 -ZS service AndroidManifest.xml# Receivers$ rafind2 -ZS receiver AndroidManifest.xml
Or use rabin2 to get information about a binary file:
$ rabin2 -I UnCrackable-Level1/classes.dexarch dalvikbaddr 0x0binsz 5528bintype classbits 32canary falseretguard falseclass 035crypto falseendian littlehavecode trueladdr 0x0lang dalviklinenum falselsyms falsemachine Dalvik VMmaxopsz 16minopsz 1nx falseos linuxpcalign 0pic falserelocs falsesanitiz falsestatic truestripped falsesubsys javava truesha1 12-5508c b7fafe72cb521450c4470043caa332da61d1bec7adler32 12-5528c 00000000
Type rabin2 -h to see all options:
$ rabin2 -hUsage: rabin2 [-AcdeEghHiIjlLMqrRsSUvVxzZ] [-@ at] [-a arch] [-b bits] [-B addr][-C F:C:D] [-f str] [-m addr] [-n str] [-N m:M] [-P[-P] pdb][-o str] [-O str] [-k query] [-D lang symname] file-@ [addr] show section, symbol or import at addr-A list sub-binaries and their arch-bits pairs-a [arch] set arch (x86, arm, .. or <arch>_<bits>)-b [bits] set bits (32, 64 ...)-B [addr] override base address (pie bins)-c list classes-cc list classes in header format-H header fields-i imports (symbols imported from libraries)-I binary info-j output in json...
Use the main r2 utility to access the r2 shell. You can load DEX binaries just like any other binary:
$ r2 classes.dex
Enter r2 -h to see all available options. A very commonly used flag is -A, which triggers an analysis after loading the target binary. However, this should be used sparingly and with small binaries as it is very time and resource consuming. You can learn more about this in the chapter "Tampering and Reverse Engineering on Android".
Once in the r2 shell, you can also access functions offered by the other radare2 utilities. For example, running i will print the information of the binary, exactly as rabin2 -I does.
To print all the strings use rabin2 -Z or the command iz (or the less verbose izq) from the r2 shell.
[0x000009c8]> izq0xc50 39 39 /dev/com.koushikdutta.superuser.daemon/0xc79 25 25 /system/app/Superuser.apk...0xd23 44 44 5UJiFctbmgbDoLXmpL12mkno8HT4Lv8dlat8FxR2GOc=0xd51 32 32 8d127684cbc37c17616d806cf50473cc0xd76 6 6 <init>0xd83 10 10 AES error:0xd8f 20 20 AES/ECB/PKCS7Padding0xda5 18 18 App is debuggable!0xdc0 9 9 CodeCheck0x11ac 7 7 Nope...0x11bf 14 14 Root detected!
Most of the time you can append special options to your commands such as q to make the command less verbose (quiet) or j to give the output in JSON format (use ~{} to prettify the JSON string).
[0x000009c8]> izj~{}[{"vaddr": 3152,"paddr": 3152,"ordinal": 1,"size": 39,"length": 39,"section": "file","type": "ascii","string": "L2Rldi9jb20ua291c2hpa2R1dHRhLnN1cGVydXNlci5kYWVtb24v"},{"vaddr": 3193,"paddr": 3193,"ordinal": 2,"size": 25,"length": 25,"section": "file","type": "ascii","string": "L3N5c3RlbS9hcHAvU3VwZXJ1c2VyLmFwaw=="},
You can print the class names and their methods with the r2 command ic (information classes).
[0x000009c8]> ic...0x0000073c [0x00000958 - 0x00000abc] 356 class 5 Lsg/vantagepoint/uncrackable1/MainActivity:: Landroid/app/Activity;0x00000958 method 0 pC Lsg/vantagepoint/uncrackable1/MainActivity.method.<init>()V0x00000970 method 1 P Lsg/vantagepoint/uncrackable1/MainActivity.method.a(Ljava/lang/String;)V0x000009c8 method 2 r Lsg/vantagepoint/uncrackable1/MainActivity.method.onCreate(Landroid/os/Bundle;)V0x00000a38 method 3 p Lsg/vantagepoint/uncrackable1/MainActivity.method.verify(Landroid/view/View;)V0x0000075c [0x00000acc - 0x00000bb2] 230 class 6 Lsg/vantagepoint/uncrackable1/a :: Ljava/lang/Object;0x00000acc method 0 sp Lsg/vantagepoint/uncrackable1/a.method.a(Ljava/lang/String;)Z0x00000b5c method 1 sp Lsg/vantagepoint/uncrackable1/a.method.b(Ljava/lang/String;)[B
You can print the imported methods with the r2 command ii (information imports).
[0x000009c8]> ii[Imports]Num Vaddr Bind Type Name...29 0x000005cc NONE FUNC Ljava/lang/StringBuilder.method.append(Ljava/lang/String;)Ljava/lang/StringBuilder;30 0x000005d4 NONE FUNC Ljava/lang/StringBuilder.method.toString()Ljava/lang/String;31 0x000005dc NONE FUNC Ljava/lang/System.method.exit(I)V32 0x000005e4 NONE FUNC Ljava/lang/System.method.getenv(Ljava/lang/String;)Ljava/lang/String;33 0x000005ec NONE FUNC Ljavax/crypto/Cipher.method.doFinal([B)[B34 0x000005f4 NONE FUNC Ljavax/crypto/Cipher.method.getInstance(Ljava/lang/String;)Ljavax/crypto/Cipher;35 0x000005fc NONE FUNC Ljavax/crypto/Cipher.method.init(ILjava/security/Key;)V36 0x00000604 NONE FUNC Ljavax/crypto/spec/SecretKeySpec.method.<init>([BLjava/lang/String;)V
A common approach when inspecting a binary is to search for something, navigate to it and visualize it in order to interpret the code. One of the ways to find something using radare2 is by filtering the output of specific commands, i.e. to grep them using ~ plus a keyword (~+ for case-insensitive). For example, we might know that the app is verifying something, we can inspect all radare2 flags and see where we find something related to "verify".
When loading a file, radare2 tags everything it's able to find. These tagged names or references are called flags. You can access them via the command
f.
In this case we will grep the flags using the keyword "verify":
[0x000009c8]> f~+verify0x00000a38 132 sym.Lsg_vantagepoint_uncrackable1_MainActivity.method.verify_Landroid_view_View__V0x00000a38 132 method.public.Lsg_vantagepoint_uncrackable1_MainActivity.Lsg_vantagepoint_uncrackable1_MainActivity.method.verify_Landroid_view_View__V0x00001400 6 str.verify
It seems that we've found one method in 0x00000a38 (that was tagged two times) and one string in 0x00001400. Let's navigate (seek) to that method by using its flag:
[0x000009c8]> s sym.Lsg_vantagepoint_uncrackable1_MainActivity.method.verify_Landroid_view_View__V
And of course you can also use the disassembler capabilities of r2 and print the disassembly with the command pd (or pdf if you know you're already located in a function).
[0x00000a38]> pd
r2 commands normally accept options (see pd?), e.g. you can limit the opcodes displayed by appending a number ("N") to the command pd N.
Instead of just printing the disassembly to the console you may want to enter the so-called Visual Mode by typing V.
By default, you will see the hexadecimal view. By typing p you can switch to different views, such as the disassembly view:
Radare2 offers a Graph Mode that is very useful to follow the flow of the code. You can access it from the Visual Mode by typing V:
This is only a selection of some radare2 commands to start getting some basic information from Android binaries. Radare2 is very powerful and has dozens of commands that you can find on the radare2 command documentation. Radare2 will be used throughout the guide for different purposes such as reversing code, debugging or performing binary analysis. We will also use it in combination with other frameworks, especially Frida (see the r2frida section for more information).
Please refer to the chapter "Tampering and Reverse Engineering on Android" for more detailed use of radare2 on Android, especially when analyzing native libraries.
r2frida is a project that allows radare2 to connect to Frida, effectively merging the powerful reverse engineering capabilities of radare2 with the dynamic instrumentation toolkit of Frida. R2frida allows you to:
Attach radare2 to any local process or remote frida-server via USB or TCP.
Read/Write memory from the target process.
Load Frida information such as maps, symbols, imports, classes and methods into radare2.
Call r2 commands from Frida as it exposes the r2pipe interface into the Frida Javascript API.
Installing r2frida
Please refer to r2frida's official installation instructions.
Using r2frida
With frida-server running, you should now be able to attach to it using the pid, spawn path, host and port, or device-id. For example, to attach to PID 1234:
$ r2 frida://1234
For more examples on how to connect to frida-server, see the usage section in the r2frida's README page.
Once attached, you should see the r2 prompt with the device-id. r2frida commands must start with \ or =!. For example, you may retrieve target information with the command \i:
[0x00000000]> \iarch x86bits 64os linuxpid 2218uid 1000objc falseruntime V8java falsecylang falsepageSize 4096pointerSize 8codeSigningPolicy optionalisDebuggerAttached false
To search in memory for a specific keyword, you may use the search command \/:
[0x00000000]> \/ unacceptableSearching 12 bytes: 75 6e 61 63 63 65 70 74 61 62 6c 65Searching 12 bytes in [0x0000561f05ebf000-0x0000561f05eca000]...Searching 12 bytes in [0xffffffffff600000-0xffffffffff601000]hits: 230x561f072d89ee hit12_0 unacceptable policyunsupported md algorithmvar bad valuec0x561f0732a91a hit12_1 unacceptableSearching 12 bytes: 75 6e 61 63 63 65 70 74 61
To output the search results in JSON format, we simply add j to our previous search command (just as we do in the r2 shell). This can be used in most of the commands:
[0x00000000]> \/j unacceptableSearching 12 bytes: 75 6e 61 63 63 65 70 74 61 62 6c 65Searching 12 bytes in [0x0000561f05ebf000-0x0000561f05eca000]...Searching 12 bytes in [0xffffffffff600000-0xffffffffff601000]hits: 23{"address":"0x561f072c4223","size":12,"flag":"hit14_1","content":"unacceptable policyunsupported md algorithmvar bad valuec0"},{"address":"0x561f072c4275","size":12,"flag":"hit14_2","content":"unacceptableSearching 12 bytes: 75 6e 61 63 63 65 70 74 61"},{"address":"0x561f072c42c8","size":12,"flag":"hit14_3","content":"unacceptableSearching 12 bytes: 75 6e 61 63 63 65 70 74 61 "},...
To list the loaded libraries use the command \il and filter the results using the internal grep from radare2 with the command ~. For example, the following command will list the loaded libraries matching the keywords keystore, ssl and crypto:
[0x00000000]> \il~keystore,ssl,crypto0x00007f3357b8e000 libssl.so.1.10x00007f3357716000 libcrypto.so.1.1
Similarly, to list the exports and filter the results by a specific keyword:
[0x00000000]> \iE libssl.so.1.1~CIPHER0x7f3357bb7ef0 f SSL_CIPHER_get_bits0x7f3357bb8260 f SSL_CIPHER_find0x7f3357bb82c0 f SSL_CIPHER_get_digest_nid0x7f3357bb8380 f SSL_CIPHER_is_aead0x7f3357bb8270 f SSL_CIPHER_get_cipher_nid0x7f3357bb7ed0 f SSL_CIPHER_get_name0x7f3357bb8340 f SSL_CIPHER_get_auth_nid0x7f3357bb7930 f SSL_CIPHER_description0x7f3357bb8300 f SSL_CIPHER_get_kx_nid0x7f3357bb7ea0 f SSL_CIPHER_get_version0x7f3357bb7f10 f SSL_CIPHER_get_id
To list or set a breakpoint use the command db. This is useful when analyzing/modifying memory:
[0x00000000]> \db
Finally, remember that you can also run Frida JavaScript code with \. plus the name of the script:
[0x00000000]> \. agent.js
You can find more examples on how to use r2frida on their Wiki project.
One of the most common things you do when testing an app is accessing the device shell. In this section we'll see how to access the Android shell both remotely from your host computer with/without a USB cable and locally from the device itself.
In order to connect to the shell of an Android device from your host computer, adb is usually your tool of choice (unless you prefer to use remote SSH access, e.g. via Termux).
For this section we assume that you've properly enabled Developer Mode and USB debugging as explained in "Testing on a Real Device". Once you've connected your Android device via USB, you can access the remote device's shell by running:
$ adb shell
press Control + D or type
exitto quit
If your device is rooted or you're using the emulator, you can get root access by running su once in the remote shell:
$ adb shellbullhead:/ $ subullhead:/ # iduid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root) context=u:r:su:s0
Only if you're working with an emulator you may alternatively restart adb with root permissions with the command
adb rootso next time you enteradb shellyou'll have root access already. This also allows to transfer data bidirectionally between your workstation and the Android file system, even with access to locations where only the root user has access to (viaadb push/pull). See more about data transfer in section "Host-Device Data Transfer" below.
Connect to Multiple Devices
If you have more than one device, remember to include the -s flag followed by the device serial ID on all your adb commands (e.g. adb -s emulator-5554 shell or adb -s 00b604081540b7c6 shell). You can get a list of all connected devices and their serial IDs by using the following command:
$ adb devicesList of devices attached00c907098530a82c deviceemulator-5554 device
Connect to a Device over Wi-Fi
You can also access your Android device without using the USB cable. For this you'll have to connect both your host computer and your Android device to the same Wi-Fi network and follow the next steps:
Connect the device to the host computer with a USB cable and set the target device to listen for a TCP/IP connection on port 5555:
adb tcpip 5555.Disconnect the USB cable from the target device and run
adb connect <device_ip_address>. Check that the device is now available by runningadb devices.Open the shell with
adb shell.
However, notice that by doing this you leave your device open to anyone being in the same network and knowing the IP address of your device. You may rather prefer using the USB connection.
For example, on a Nexus device, you can find the IP address at Settings -> System -> About phone -> Status -> IP address or by going to the Wi-Fi menu and tapping once on the network you're connected to.
See the full instructions and considerations in the Android Developers Documentation.
Connect to a Device via SSH
If you prefer, you can also enable SSH access. A convenient option is to use Termux, which you can easily configure to offer SSH access (with password or public key authentication) and start it with the command sshd (starts by default on port 8022). In order to connect to the Termux via SSH you can simply run the command ssh -p 8022 <ip_address> (where ip_address is the actual remote device IP). This option has some additional benefits as it allows to access the file system via SFTP also on port 8022.
While usually using an on-device shell (terminal emulator) might be very tedious compared to a remote shell, it can prove handy for debugging in case of, for example, network issues or check some configuration.
Termux is a terminal emulator for Android that provides a Linux environment that works directly with or without rooting and with no setup required. The installation of additional packages is a trivial task thanks to its own APT package manager (which makes a difference in comparison to other terminal emulator apps). You can search for specific packages by using the command pkg search <pkg_name> and install packages with pkg install <pkg_name>. You can install Termux straight from Google Play.
You can copy files to and from a device by using the commands adb pull <remote> <local> and adb push <local> <remote> commands. Their usage is very straightforward. For example, the following will copy foo.txt from your current directory (local) to the sdcard folder (remote):
$ adb push foo.txt /sdcard/foo.txt
This approach is commonly used when you know exactly what you want to copy and from/to where and also supports bulk file transfer, e.g. you can pull (copy) a whole directory from the Android device to your workstation.
$ adb pull /sdcard/sdcard/: 1190 files pulled. 14.1 MB/s (304526427 bytes in 20.566s)
Android Studio has a built-in Device File Explorer which you can open by going to View -> Tool Windows -> Device File Explorer.
If you're using a rooted device you can now start exploring the whole file system. However, when using a non-rooted device accessing the app sandboxes won't work unless the app is debuggable and even then you are "jailed" within the app sandbox.
This option is useful when you are working on a specific app and want to copy files you might encounter inside its sandbox (notice that you'll only have access to the files that the target app has access to). This approach works without having to set the app as debuggable, which is otherwise required when using Android Studio's Device File Explorer.
First, connect to the app with Objection as explained in "Recommended Tools - Objection". Then, use ls and cd as you normally would on your terminal to explore the available files:
$ frida-ps -U | grep -i owasp21228 sg.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android$ objection -g sg.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android explore...g.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android on (google: 8.1.0) [usb] # cd ../data/user/0/sg.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android...g.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android on (google: 8.1.0) [usb] # lsType ... Name--------- ... -------------------Directory ... cacheDirectory ... code_cacheDirectory ... libDirectory ... shared_prefsDirectory ... filesDirectory ... app_ACRA-approvedDirectory ... app_ACRA-unapprovedDirectory ... databasesReadable: True Writable: True
One you have a file you want to download you can just run file download <some_file>. This will download that file to your working directory. The same way you can upload files using file upload.
...[usb] # lsType ... Name------ ... -----------------------------------------------File ... sg.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android_preferences.xmlReadable: True Writable: True...[usb] # file download sg.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android_preferences.xmlDownloading ...Streaming file from device...Writing bytes to destination...Successfully downloaded ... to sg.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android_preferences.xml
The downside is that, at the time of this writing, objection does not support bulk file transfer yet, so you're restricted to copy individual files. Still, this can come handy in some scenarios where you're already exploring the app using objection anyway and find some interesting file. Instead of e.g. taking note of the full path of that file and use adb pull <path_to_some_file> from a separate terminal, you might just want to directly do file download <some_file>.
If you have a rooted device and have Termux installed and have properly configured SSH access on it, you should have an SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) server already running on port 8022. You may access it from your terminal:
$ sftp -P 8022 root@localhost...sftp> cd /data/datasftp> ls -1...sg.vantagepoint.helloworldjnisg.vantagepoint.uncrackable1sg.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android
Or simply by using an SFTP-capable client like FileZilla:
Check the Termux Wiki to learn more about remote file access methods.
There are several ways of extracting APK files from a device. You will need to decide which one is the easiest method depending if the app is public or private.
One of the easiest options is to download the APK from websites that mirror public applications from the Google Play Store. However, keep in mind that these sites are not official and there is no guarantee that the application hasn't been repackaged or contain malware. A few reputable websites that host APKs and are not known for modifying apps and even list SHA-1 and SHA-256 checksums of the apps are:
APKPure
Beware that you do not have control over these sites and you cannot guarantee what they do in the future. Only use them if it's your only option left.
gplaycli is a Python based CLI tool to search, install and update Android applications from the Google Play Store. Follow the installation steps and you're ready to run it. gplaycli offers several options, please refer to its help (-h) for more information.
If you're unsure about the package name (or AppID) of an app, you may perform a keyword based search for APKs (-s):
$ gplaycli -s "google keep"Title Creator Size Last Update AppID VersionGoogle Keep - notes and lists Google LLC 15.78MB 4 Sep 2019 com.google.android.keep 193510330Maps - Navigate & Explore Google LLC 35.25MB 16 May 2019 com.google.android.apps.maps 1016200134Google Google LLC 82.57MB 30 Aug 2019 com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox 301008048
Note that regional (Google Play) restrictions apply when using gplaycli. In order to access apps that are restricted in your country you can use alternative app stores such as the ones described in "Alternative App Stores".
Next, you can download (-d) the selected APK by specifying its AppID (add -p to show a progress bar and -v for verbosity):
$ gplaycli -p -v -d com.google.android.keep[INFO] GPlayCli version 3.26 [Python3.7.4][INFO] Configuration file is ~/.config/gplaycli/gplaycli.conf[INFO] Device is bacon[INFO] Using cached token.[INFO] Using auto retrieved token to connect to API[INFO] 1 / 1 com.google.android.keep[################################] 15.78MB/15.78MB - 00:00:02 6.57MB/s/s[INFO] Download complete
The com.google.android.keep.apk file will be in your current directory. As you might imagine, this approach is a very convenient way to download APKs, especially with regards to automation.
You may use your own Google Play credentials or token. By default, gplaycli will use an internally provided token.
Obtaining app packages from the device is the recommended method as we can guarantee the app hasn't been modified by a third-party. To obtain applications from a rooted or non-rooted device, you can use the following methods:
Use adb pull to retrieve the APK. If you don't know the package name, the first step is to list all the applications installed on the device:
$ adb shell pm list packages
Once you have located the package name of the application, you need the full path where it is stored on the system to download it.
$ adb shell pm path <package name>
With the full path to the APK, you can now simply use adb pull to extract it.
$ adb pull <apk path>
The APK will be downloaded in your working directory.
Alternatively, there are also apps like APK Extractor that do not require root and can even share the extracted APK via your preferred method. This can be useful if you don't feel like connecting the device or setting up adb over the network to transfer the file.
Use adb install to install an APK on an emulator or connected device.
adb install path_to_apk
Note that if you have the original source code and use Android Studio, you do not need to do this because Android Studio handles the packaging and installation of the app for you.
One fundamental step when analyzing apps is information gathering. This can be done by inspecting the app package on your workstation or remotely by accessing the app data on the device. You'll find more advanced techniques in the subsequent chapters but, for now, we will focus on the basics: getting a list of all installed apps, exploring the app package and accessing the app data directories on the device itself. This should give you a bit of context about what the app is all about without even having to reverse engineer it or perform more advanced analysis. We will be answering questions such as:
Which files are included in the package?
Which native libraries does the app use?
Which app components does the app define? Any services or content providers?
Is the app debuggable?
Does the app contain a network security policy?
Does the app create any new files when being installed?
When targeting apps that are installed on the device, you'll first have to figure out the correct package name of the application you want to analyze. You can retrieve the installed apps either by using pm (Android Package Manager) or by using frida-ps:
$ adb shell pm list packagespackage:sg.vantagepoint.helloworldjnipackage:eu.chainfire.supersupackage:org.teamsik.apps.hackingchallenge.easypackage:org.teamsik.apps.hackingchallenge.hardpackage:sg.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android
You can include flags to show only third party apps (-3) and the location of their APK file (-f), which you can use afterwards to download it via adb pull:
$ adb shell pm list packages -3 -fpackage:/data/app/sg.vantagepoint.helloworldjni-1/base.apk=sg.vantagepoint.helloworldjnipackage:/data/app/eu.chainfire.supersu-1/base.apk=eu.chainfire.supersupackage:/data/app/org.teamsik.apps.hackingchallenge.easy-1/base.apk=org.teamsik.apps.hackingchallenge.easypackage:/data/app/org.teamsik.apps.hackingchallenge.hard-1/base.apk=org.teamsik.apps.hackingchallenge.hardpackage:/data/app/sg.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android-kR0ovWl9eoU_yh0jPJ9caQ==/base.apk=sg.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android
This is the same as running adb shell pm path <app_package_id> on an app package ID:
$ adb shell pm path sg.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_androidpackage:/data/app/sg.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android-kR0ovWl9eoU_yh0jPJ9caQ==/base.apk
Use frida-ps -Uai to get all apps (-a) currently installed (-i) on the connected USB device (-U):
$ frida-ps -UaiPID Name Identifier----- ---------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------766 Android System android21228 Attack me if u can sg.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android4281 Termux com.termux- Uncrackable1 sg.vantagepoint.uncrackable1- drozer Agent com.mwr.dz
Note that this also shows the PID of the apps that are running at the moment. Take a note of the "Identifier" and the PID if any as you'll need them afterwards.
Once you have collected the package name of the application you want to target, you'll want to start gathering information about it. First, retrieve the APK as explained in "Basic Testing Operations - Obtaining and Extracting Apps".
APK files are actually ZIP files that can be unpacked using a standard unarchiver:
$ unzip base.apk$ ls -lah-rw-r--r-- 1 sven staff 11K Dec 5 14:45 AndroidManifest.xmldrwxr-xr-x 5 sven staff 170B Dec 5 16:18 META-INFdrwxr-xr-x 6 sven staff 204B Dec 5 16:17 assets-rw-r--r-- 1 sven staff 3.5M Dec 5 14:41 classes.dexdrwxr-xr-x 3 sven staff 102B Dec 5 16:18 libdrwxr-xr-x 27 sven staff 918B Dec 5 16:17 res-rw-r--r-- 1 sven staff 241K Dec 5 14:45 resources.arsc
The following files are unpacked:
AndroidManifest.xml: contains the definition of the app's package name, target and minimum API level, app configuration, app components, permissions, etc.
META-INF: contains the app's metadata
MANIFEST.MF: stores hashes of the app resources
CERT.RSA: the app's certificate(s)
CERT.SF: list of resources and the SHA-1 digest of the corresponding lines in the MANIFEST.MF file
assets: directory containing app assets (files used within the Android app, such as XML files, JavaScript files, and pictures), which the AssetManager can retrieve
classes.dex: classes compiled in the DEX file format, the Dalvik virtual machine/Android Runtime can process. DEX is Java bytecode for the Dalvik Virtual Machine. It is optimized for small devices
lib: directory containing 3rd party libraries that are part of the APK.
res: directory containing resources that haven't been compiled into resources.arsc
resources.arsc: file containing precompiled resources, such as XML files for the layout
As unzipping with the standard unzip utility leaves some files such as the AndroidManifest.xml unreadable, you better unpack the APK using apktool as described in "Recommended Tools - apktool". The unpacking results into:
$ ls -alhtotal 32drwxr-xr-x 9 sven staff 306B Dec 5 16:29 .drwxr-xr-x 5 sven staff 170B Dec 5 16:29 ..-rw-r--r-- 1 sven staff 10K Dec 5 16:29 AndroidManifest.xml-rw-r--r-- 1 sven staff 401B Dec 5 16:29 apktool.ymldrwxr-xr-x 6 sven staff 204B Dec 5 16:29 assetsdrwxr-xr-x 3 sven staff 102B Dec 5 16:29 libdrwxr-xr-x 4 sven staff 136B Dec 5 16:29 originaldrwxr-xr-x 131 sven staff 4.3K Dec 5 16:29 resdrwxr-xr-x 9 sven staff 306B Dec 5 16:29 smali
The Android Manifest
The Android Manifest is the main source of information, it includes a lot of interesting information such as the package name, the permissions, app components, etc.
Here's a non-exhaustive list of some info and the corresponding keywords that you can easily search for in the Android Manifest by just inspecting the file or by using grep -i <keyword> AndroidManifest.xml:
App permissions:
permission(see "Android Platform APIs")Backup allowance:
android:allowBackup(see "Data Storage on Android")App components:
activity,service,provider,receiver(see "Android Platform APIs" and "Data Storage on Android")Debuggable flag:
debuggable(see "Code Quality and Build Settings of Android Apps")
Please refer to the mentioned chapters to learn more about how to test each of these points.
App Binary
As seen above in "Exploring the App Package", the app binary (classes.dex) can be found in the root directory of the app package. It is a so-called DEX (Dalvik Executable) file that contains compiled Java code. Due to its nature, after applying some conversions you'll be able to use a decompiler to produce Java code. We've also seen the folder smali that was obtained after we run apktool. This contains the disassembled Dalvik bytecode in an intermediate language called smali, which is a human-readable representation of the Dalvik executable.
Refer to the section "Reviewing Decompiled Java Code" in the chapter "Tampering and Reverse Engineering on Android" for more information about how to reverse engineer DEX files.
Native Libraries
You can inspect the lib folder in the APK:
$ ls -1 lib/armeabi/libdatabase_sqlcipher.solibnative.solibsqlcipher_android.solibstlport_shared.so
or from the device with objection:
...g.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android on (google: 8.1.0) [usb] # ls libType ... Name------ ... ------------------------File ... libnative.soFile ... libdatabase_sqlcipher.soFile ... libstlport_shared.soFile ... libsqlcipher_android.so
For now this is all information you can get about the native libraries unless you start reverse engineering them, which is done using a different approach than the one used to reverse the app binary as this code cannot be decompiled but only disassembled. Refer to the section "Reviewing Disassemble Native Code" in the chapter "Tampering and Reverse Engineering on Android" for more information about how to reverse engineer these libraries.
Other App Resources
It is normally worth taking a look at the rest of the resources and files that you may find in the root folder of the APK as some times they contain additional goodies like key stores, encrypted databases, certificates, etc.
Once you have installed the app, there is further information to explore, where tools like objection come in handy.
When using objection you can retrieve different kinds of information, where env will show you all the directory information of the app.
$ objection -g sg.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android explore...g.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android on (google: 8.1.0) [usb] # envName Path---------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------cacheDirectory /data/user/0/sg.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android/cachecodeCacheDirectory /data/user/0/sg.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android/code_cacheexternalCacheDirectory /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/sg.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android/cachefilesDirectory /data/user/0/sg.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android/filesobbDir /storage/emulated/0/Android/obb/sg.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_androidpackageCodePath /data/app/sg.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android-kR0ovWl9eoU_yh0jPJ9caQ==/base.apk
Among this information we find:
The internal data directory (aka. sandbox directory) which is at
/data/data/[package-name]or/data/user/0/[package-name]The external data directory at
/storage/emulated/0/Android/data/[package-name]or/sdcard/Android/data/[package-name]The path to the app package in
/data/app/
The internal data directory is used by the app to store data created during runtime and has the following basic structure:
...g.vp.owasp_mobile.omtg_android on (google: 8.1.0) [usb] # lsType ... Name--------- ... -------------------Directory ... cacheDirectory ... code_cacheDirectory ... libDirectory ... shared_prefsDirectory ... filesDirectory ... databasesReadable: True Writable: True
Each folder has its own purpose:
cache: This location is used for data caching. For example, the WebView cache is found in this directory.
code_cache: This is the location of the file system's application-specific cache directory designed for storing cached code. On devices running Android 5.0 (API level 21) or later, the system will delete any files stored in this location when the app or the entire platform is upgraded.
lib: This folder stores native libraries written in C/C++. These libraries can have one of several file extensions, including .so and .dll (x86 support). This folder contains subdirectories for the platforms the app has native libraries for, including
armeabi: compiled code for all ARM-based processors
armeabi-v7a: compiled code for all ARM-based processors, version 7 and above only
arm64-v8a: compiled code for all 64-bit ARM-based processors, version 8 and above based only
x86: compiled code for x86 processors only
x86_64: compiled code for x86_64 processors only
mips: compiled code for MIPS processors
shared_prefs: This folder contains an XML file that stores values saved via the SharedPreferences APIs.
files: This folder stores regular files created by the app.
databases: This folder stores SQLite database files generated by the app at runtime, e.g., user data files.
However, the app might store more data not only inside these folders but also in the parent folder (/data/data/[package-name]).
Refer to the "Testing Data Storage" chapter for more information and best practices on securely storing sensitive data.
On Android you can easily inspect the log of system messages by using Logcat. There are two ways to execute Logcat:
Logcat is part of Dalvik Debug Monitor Server (DDMS) in Android Studio. If the app is running in debug mode, the log output will be shown in the Android Monitor on the Logcat tab. You can filter the app's log output by defining patterns in Logcat.
You can execute Logcat with adb to store the log output permanently:
$ adb logcat > logcat.log
With the following command you can specifically grep for the log output of the app in scope, just insert the package name. Of course your app needs to be running for ps to be able to get its PID.
$ adb logcat | grep "$(adb shell ps | grep <package-name> | awk '{print $2}')"
Remotely sniffing all Android traffic in real-time is possible with tcpdump, netcat (nc), and Wireshark. First, make sure that you have the latest version of Android tcpdump on your phone. Here are the installation steps:
$ adb root$ adb remount$ adb push /wherever/you/put/tcpdump /system/xbin/tcpdump
If execution of adb root returns the error adbd cannot run as root in production builds, install tcpdump as follows:
$ adb push /wherever/you/put/tcpdump /data/local/tmp/tcpdump$ adb shell$ su$ mount -o rw,remount /system;$ cp /data/local/tmp/tcpdump /system/xbin/$ cd /system/xbin$ chmod 755 tcpdump
Remember: To use tcpdump, you need root privileges on the phone!
Execute tcpdump once to see if it works. Once a few packets have come in, you can stop tcpdump by pressing CTRL+c.
$ tcpdumptcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decodelistening on wlan0, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 262144 bytes04:54:06.590751 00:9e:1e:10:7f:69 (oui Unknown) > Broadcast, RRCP-0x23 reply04:54:09.659658 00:9e:1e:10:7f:69 (oui Unknown) > Broadcast, RRCP-0x23 reply04:54:10.579795 00:9e:1e:10:7f:69 (oui Unknown) > Broadcast, RRCP-0x23 reply^C3 packets captured3 packets received by filter0 packets dropped by kernel
To remotely sniff the Android phone's network traffic, first execute tcpdump and pipe its output to netcat (nc):
$ tcpdump -i wlan0 -s0 -w - | nc -l -p 11111
The tcpdump command above involves
listening on the wlan0 interface,
defining the size (snapshot length) of the capture in bytes to get everything (-s0), and
writing to a file (-w). Instead of a filename, we pass
-, which will make tcpdump write to stdout.
By using the pipe (|), we sent all output from tcpdump to netcat, which opens a listener on port 11111. You'll usually want to monitor the wlan0 interface. If you need another interface, list the available options with the command $ ip addr.
To access port 11111, you need to forward the port to your machine via adb.
$ adb forward tcp:11111 tcp:11111
The following command connects you to the forwarded port via netcat and piping to Wireshark.
$ nc localhost 11111 | wireshark -k -S -i -
Wireshark should start immediately (-k). It gets all data from stdin (-i -) via netcat, which is connected to the forwarded port. You should see all the phone's traffic from the wlan0 interface.
You can display the captured traffic in a human-readable format with Wireshark. Figure out which protocols are used and whether they are unencrypted. Capturing all traffic (TCP and UDP) is important, so you should execute all functions of the tested application and analyze it.
This neat little trick allows you now to identify what kind of protocols are used and to which endpoints the app is talking to. The questions is now, how can I test the endpoints if Burp is not capable of showing the traffic? There is no easy answer for this, but a few Burp plugins that can get you started.
Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM), the successor to Google Cloud Messaging (GCM), is a free service offered by Google that allows you to send messages between an application server and client apps. The server and client app communicate via the FCM/GCM connection server, which handles downstream and upstream messages.
Downstream messages (push notifications) are sent from the application server to the client app; upstream messages are sent from the client app to the server.
FCM is available for Android, iOS, and Chrome. FCM currently provides two connection server protocols: HTTP and XMPP. As described in the official documentation, these protocols are implemented differently. The following example demonstrates how to intercept both protocols.
Preparation of Test Setup
You need to either configure iptables on your phone or use bettercap to be able to intercept traffic.
FCM can use either XMPP or HTTP to communicate with the Google backend.
HTTP
FCM uses the ports 5228, 5229, and 5230 for HTTP communication. Usually, only port 5228 is used.
Configure local port forwarding for the ports used by FCM. The following example applies to macOS:
$ echo "rdr pass inet proto tcp from any to any port 5228-> 127.0.0.1 port 8080rdr pass inet proto tcp from any to any port 5229 -> 127.0.0.1 port 8080rdr pass inet proto tcp from any to any port 5230 -> 127.0.0.1 port 8080" | sudo pfctl -ef -
The interception proxy must listen to the port specified in the port forwarding rule above (port 8080).
XMPP
For XMPP communication, FCM uses ports 5235 (Production) and 5236 (Testing).
Configure local port forwarding for the ports used by FCM. The following example applies to macOS:
$ echo "rdr pass inet proto tcp from any to any port 5235-> 127.0.0.1 port 8080rdr pass inet proto tcp from any to any port 5236 -> 127.0.0.1 port 8080" | sudo pfctl -ef -
Intercepting the Requests
The interception proxy must listen to the port specified in the port forwarding rule above (port 8080).
Start the app and trigger a function that uses FCM. You should see HTTP messages in your interception proxy.
End-to-End Encryption for Push Notifications
As an additional layer of security, push notifications can be encrypted by using Capillary. Capillary is a library to simplify the sending of end-to-end (E2E) encrypted push messages from Java-based application servers to Android clients.
Several tools support the network analysis of applications that rely on the HTTP(S) protocol. The most important tools are the so-called interception proxies; OWASP ZAP and Burp Suite Professional are the most famous. An interception proxy gives the tester a man-in-the-middle position. This position is useful for reading and/or modifying all app requests and endpoint responses, which are used for testing Authorization, Session, Management, etc.
Setting Up a Web Proxy on an Android Virtual Device (AVD)
The following procedure, which works on the Android emulator that ships with Android Studio 3.x, is for setting up an HTTP proxy on the emulator:
Set up your proxy to listen on localhost and for example port 8080.
Configure the HTTP proxy in the emulator settings:
Click on the three dots in the emulator menu bar
Open the Settings Menu
Click on the Proxy tab
Select Manual proxy configuration
Enter "127.0.0.1" in the Host Name field and your proxy port in the Port number field (e.g., "8080")
Tap Apply
HTTP and HTTPS requests should now be routed over the proxy on the host machine. If not, try toggling airplane mode off and on.
A proxy for an AVD can also be configured on the command line by using the emulator command when starting an AVD. The following example starts the AVD Nexus_5X_API_23 and setting a proxy to 127.0.0.1 and port 8080.
$ emulator @Nexus_5X_API_23 -http-proxy 127.0.0.1:8080
Installing a CA Certificate on the Virtual Device
An easy way to install a CA certificate is to push the certificate to the device and add it to the certificate store via Security Settings. For example, you can install the PortSwigger (Burp) CA certificate as follows:
Start Burp and use a web browser on the host to navigate to burp/, then download
cacert.derby clicking the "CA Certificate" button.Change the file extension from
.derto.cer.Push the file to the emulator:
$ adb push cacert.cer /sdcard/Navigate to Settings -> Security -> Install from SD Card.
Scroll down and tap
cacert.cer.
You should then be prompted to confirm installation of the certificate (you'll also be asked to set a device PIN if you haven't already).
For Android 7.0 (API level 24) and above follow the same procedure described in the "Bypassing the Network Security Configuration" section.
The available network setup options must be evaluated first. The mobile device used for testing and the machine running the interception proxy must be connected to the same Wi-Fi network. Use either an (existing) access point or create an ad-hoc wireless network.
Once you've configured the network and established a connection between the testing machine and the mobile device, several steps remain.
The proxy must be configured to point to the interception proxy.
The [interception proxy's CA certificate must be added to the trusted certificates in the Android device's certificate storage](https://support.portswigger.net/customer/portal/articles/1841102-installing-burp-s-ca-certificate-in-an-android-device "Installing Burp's CA Certificate in an Android Device"). The location of the menu used to store CA certificates may depend on the Android version and Android OEM modifications of the settings menu.
Some application (e.g. the Chrome browser) may show
NET::ERR_CERT_VALIDITY_TOO_LONGerrors, if the leaf certificate happens to have a validity extending a certain time (39 months in case of Chrome). This happens if the default Burp CA certificate is used, since the Burp Suite issues leaf certificates with the same validity as its CA certificate. You can circumvent this by creating your own CA certificate and import it to the Burp Suite, as explained in a blog post on nviso.be.
After completing these steps and starting the app, the requests should show up in the interception proxy.
A video of setting up OWASP ZAP with an Android device can be found on secure.force.com.
A few other differences: from Android 8.0 (API level 26) onward, the network behavior of the app changes when HTTPS traffic is tunneled through another connection. And from Android 9 (API level 28) onward, the SSLSocket and SSLEngine will behave a little bit different in terms of error handling when something goes wrong during the handshakes.
As mentioned before, starting with Android 7.0 (API level 24), the Android OS will no longer trust user CA certificates by default, unless specified in the application. In the following section, we explain two methods to bypass this Android security control.
Bypassing the Network Security Configuration
From Android 7.0 (API level 24) onwards, the network security configuration allows apps to customize their network security settings, by defining which CA certificates the app will be trusting.
In order to implement the network security configuration for an app, you would need to create a new xml resource file with the name network_security_config.xml. This is explained in detail in one of the Google Android Codelabs.
After the creation, the apps must also include an entry in the manifest file to point to the new network security configuration file.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><manifest ... ><application android:networkSecurityConfig="@xml/network_security_config"... >...</application></manifest>
The network security configuration uses an XML file where the app specifies which CA certificates will be trusted. There are various ways to bypass the Network Security Configuration, which will be described below. Please also see the Security Analyst’s Guide to Network Security Configuration in Android P for further information.
# Adding the User Certificates to the Network Security Configuration
There are different configurations available for the Network Security Configuration to add non-system Certificate Authorities via the src attribute:
<certificates src=["system" | "user" | "raw resource"]overridePins=["true" | "false"] />Each certificate can be one of the following:- a "raw resource" ID pointing to a file containing X.509 certificates- "system" for the pre-installed system CA certificates- "user" for user-added CA certificatesThe CA certificates trusted by the app can be a system trusted CA as well as a user CA. Usually you will have added the certificate of your interception proxy already as additional CA in Android. Therefore we will focus on the "user" setting, which allows you to force the Android app to trust this certificate with the following Network Security Configuration configuration below:```xml<network-security-config><base-config><trust-anchors><certificates src="system" /><certificates src="user" /></trust-anchors></base-config></network-security-config>
To implement this new setting you must follow the steps below:
Decompile the app using a decompilation tool like apktool:
$ apktool d <filename>.apkMake the application trust user certificates by creating a network security configuration that includes
<certificates src="user" />as explained aboveGo into the directory created by apktool when decompiling the app and rebuild the app using apktool. The new apk will be in the
distdirectory.$ apktool bYou need to repackage the app, as explained in the "Repackaging" section of the "Reverse Engineering and Tampering" chapter. For more details on the repackaging process you can also consult the Android developer documentation, that explains the process as a whole.
Note that even if this method is quite simple its major drawback is that you have to apply this operation for each application you want to evaluate which is additional overhead for testing.
Bear in mind that if the app you are testing has additional hardening measures, like verification of the app signature you might not be able to start the app anymore. As part of the repackaging you will sign the app with your own key and therefore the signature changes will result in triggering such checks that might lead to immediate termination of the app. You would need to identify and disable such checks either by patching them during repackaging of the app or dynamic instrumentation through Frida.
There is a python script available that automates the steps described above called Android-CertKiller. This Python script can extract the APK from an installed Android app, decompile it, make it debuggable, add a new network security config that allows user certificates, builds and signs the new APK and installs the new APK with the SSL Bypass. The last step, installing the app might fail, due to a bug at the moment.
python main.py -w***************************************Android CertKiller (v0.1)***************************************CertKiller Wizard Mode---------------------------------List of devices attached4200dc72f27bc44d device---------------------------------Enter Application Package Name: nsc.android.mstg.owasp.org.android_nscPackage: /data/app/nsc.android.mstg.owasp.org.android_nsc-1/base.apkI. Initiating APK extraction from devicecomplete------------------------------I. Decompilingcomplete------------------------------I. Applying SSL bypasscomplete------------------------------I. Building New APKcomplete------------------------------I. Signing APKcomplete------------------------------Would you like to install the APK on your device(y/N): y------------------------------------Installing Unpinned APK------------------------------Finished
# Adding the Proxy's certificate among system trusted CAs using Magisk
In order to avoid the obligation of configuring the Network Security Configuration for each application, we must force the device to accept the proxy's certificate as one of the systems trusted certificates.
There is a Magisk module that will automatically add all user-installed CA certificates to the list of system trusted CAs.
Download the latest version of the module here, push the downloaded file over to the device and import it in the Magisk Manager's "Module" view by clicking on the + button. Finally, a restart is required by Magisk Manager to let changes take effect.
From now on, any CA certificate that is installed by the user via "Settings", "Security & location", "Encryption & credentials", "Install from storage" (location may differ) is automatically pushed into the system's trust store by this Magisk module. Reboot and verify that the CA certificate is listed in "Settings", "Security & location", "Encryption & credentials", "Trusted credentials" (location may differ).
# Manually adding the Proxy's certificate among system trusted CAs
Alternatively, you can follow the following steps manually in order to achieve the same result:
Make the /system partition writable, which is only possible on a rooted device. Run the 'mount' command to make sure the /system is writable:
mount -o rw,remount /system. If this command fails, try running the following command 'mount -o rw,remount -t ext4 /system'Prepare the proxy's CA certificates to match system certificates format. Export the proxy's certificates in
derformat (this is the default format in Burp Suite) then run the following commands:$ openssl x509 -inform DER -in cacert.der -out cacert.pem$ openssl x509 -inform PEM -subject_hash_old -in cacert.pem | head -1mv cacert.pem <hash>.0Finally, copy the
<hash>.0file into the directory /system/etc/security/cacerts and then run the following command:chmod 644 <hash>.0
By following the steps described above you allow any application to trust the proxy's certificate, which allows you to intercept its traffic, unless of course the application uses SSL pinning.
Applications often implement security controls that make it more difficult to perform a security review of the application, such as root detection and certificate pinning. Ideally, you would acquire both a version of the application that has these controls enabled, and one where the controls are disabled. This allows you to analyze the proper implementation of the controls, after which you can continue with the less-secure version for further tests.
Of course, this is not always possible, and you may need to perform a black-box assessment on an application where all security controls are enabled. The section below shows you how you can circumvent certificate pinning for different applications.
Once you have setup an interception proxy and have a MITM position you might still not be able to see anything. This might be due to restrictions in the app (see next section) but can also be due to so called client isolation in the Wi-Fi that you are connected to.
Wireless Client Isolation is a security feature that prevents wireless clients from communicating with one another. This feature is useful for guest and BYOD SSIDs adding a level of security to limit attacks and threats between devices connected to the wireless networks.
What to do if the Wi-Fi we need for testing has client isolation?
You can configure the proxy on your Android device to point to 127.0.0.1:8080, connect your phone via USB to your laptop and use adb to make a reverse port forwarding:
$ adb reverse tcp:8080 tcp:8080
Once you have done this all proxy traffic on your Android phone will be going to port 8080 on 127.0.0.1 and it will be redirected via adb to 127.0.0.1:8080 on your laptop and you will see now the traffic in your Burp. With this trick you are able to test and intercept traffic also in Wi-Fis that have client isolation.
Once you have setup an interception proxy and have a MITM position you might still not be able to see anything. This is mainly due to the following reasons:
The app is using a framework like Xamarin that simply is not using the proxy settings of the Android OS or
The app you are testing is verifying if a proxy is set and is not allowing now any communication.
In both scenarios you would need additional steps to finally being able to see the traffic. In the sections below we are describing two different solutions, bettercap and iptables.
You could also use an access point that is under your control to redirect the traffic, but this would require additional hardware and we focus for now on software solutions.
For both solutions you need to activate "Support invisible proxying" in Burp, in Proxy Tab/Options/Edit Interface.
iptables
You can use iptables on the Android device to redirect all traffic to your interception proxy. The following command would redirect port 80 to your proxy running on port 8080
$ iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j DNAT --to-destination <Your-Proxy-IP>:8080
Verify the iptables settings and check the IP and port.
$ iptables -t nat -LChain PREROUTING (policy ACCEPT)target prot opt source destinationChain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)target prot opt source destinationChain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)target prot opt source destinationDNAT tcp -- anywhere anywhere tcp dpt:5288 to:<Your-Proxy-IP>:8080Chain POSTROUTING (policy ACCEPT)target prot opt source destinationChain natctrl_nat_POSTROUTING (0 references)target prot opt source destinationChain oem_nat_pre (0 references)target prot opt source destination
In case you want to reset the iptables configuration you can flush the rules:
$ iptables -t nat -F
bettercap
Read the chapter "Testing Network Communication" and the test case "Simulating a Man-in-the-Middle Attack" for further preparation and instructions for running bettercap.
The machine where you run your proxy and the Android device must be connected to the same wireless network. Start bettercap with the following command, replacing the IP address below (X.X.X.X) with the IP address of your Android device.
$ sudo bettercap -eval "set arp.spoof.targets X.X.X.X; arp.spoof on; set arp.spoof.internal true; set arp.spoof.fullduplex true;"bettercap v2.22 (built for darwin amd64 with go1.12.1) [type 'help' for a list of commands][19:21:39] [sys.log] [inf] arp.spoof enabling forwarding[19:21:39] [sys.log] [inf] arp.spoof arp spoofer started, probing 1 targets.
Some mobile apps are trying to detect if a proxy is set. If that's the case they will assume that this is malicious and will not work properly.
In order to bypass such a protection mechanism you could either setup bettercap or configure iptables that don't need a proxy setup on your Android phone. A third option we didn't mention before and that is applicable in this scenario is using Frida. It is possible on Android to detect if a system proxy is set by querying the ProxyInfo class and check the getHost() and getPort() methods. There might be various other methods to achieve the same task and you would need to decompile the APK in order to identify the actual class and method name.
Below you can find boiler plate source code for a Frida script that will help you to overload the method (in this case called isProxySet) that is verifying if a proxy is set and will always return false. Even if a proxy is now configured the app will now think that none is set as the function returns false.
setTimeout(function(){Java.perform(function (){console.log("[*] Script loaded")var Proxy = Java.use("<package-name>.<class-name>")Proxy.isProxySet.overload().implementation = function() {console.log("[*] isProxySet function invoked")return false}});});
Some applications will implement SSL Pinning, which prevents the application from accepting your intercepting certificate as a valid certificate. This means that you will not be able to monitor the traffic between the application and the server.
For information on disabling SSL Pinning both statically and dynamically, refer to "Bypassing SSL Pinning" in the "Testing Network Communication" chapter.
Signing Manually (Android developer documentation) - https://developer.android.com/studio/publish/app-signing#signing-manually
Basic Network Security Configuration - https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/android-network-security-config/#3
Security Analyst’s Guide to Network Security Configuration in Android P - https://www.nowsecure.com/blog/2018/08/15/a-security-analysts-guide-to-network-security-configuration-in-android-p/
Android developer documentation - https://developer.android.com/studio/publish/app-signing#signing-manually
Android 8.0 Behavior Changes - https://developer.android.com/about/versions/oreo/android-8.0-changes
Android 9.0 Behavior Changes - https://developer.android.com/about/versions/pie/android-9.0-changes-all#device-security-changes
Codenames, Tags and Build Numbers - https://source.android.com/setup/start/build-numbers
Create and Manage Virtual Devices - https://developer.android.com/studio/run/managing-avds.html
Guide to rooting mobile devices - https://www.xda-developers.com/root/
SharedPreferences APIs - https://developer.android.com/training/basics/data-storage/shared-preferences.html
Debugging with Logcat - https://developer.android.com/tools/debugging/debugging-log.html
Android's APK format - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_application_package
Android remote sniffing using Tcpdump, nc and Wireshark - https://blog.dornea.nu/2015/02/20/android-remote-sniffing-using-tcpdump-nc-and-wireshark/
Wireless Client Isolation - https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Firewall_and_Traffic_Shaping/Wireless_Client_Isolation
Androbugs - https://github.com/AndroBugs/AndroBugs_Framework
Android NDK Downloads - https://developer.android.com/ndk/downloads/index.html#stable-downloads
Android Platform Tools - https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/platform-tools.html
Android Studio - https://developer.android.com/studio/index.html
Android tcpdump - https://www.androidtcpdump.com/
Android-CertKiller - https://github.com/51j0/Android-CertKiller
Android-SSL-TrustKiller - https://github.com/iSECPartners/Android-SSL-TrustKiller
angr - https://github.com/angr/angr
APK Extractor - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ext.ui
APKMirror - https://apkmirror.com
APKPure - https://apkpure.com
apktool - https://github.com/iBotPeaches/Apktool
Burp Suite Professional - https://portswigger.net/burp/
Burp-non-HTTP-Extension - https://github.com/summitt/Burp-Non-HTTP-Extension
Capillary - https://github.com/google/capillary
Device File Explorer - https://developer.android.com/studio/debug/device-file-explorer
FileZilla - https://filezilla-project.org/download.php
Frida - https://www.frida.re/docs/android/
Frida CLI - https://www.frida.re/docs/frida-cli/
frida-ls-devices - https://www.frida.re/docs/frida-ls-devices/
frida-ps - https://www.frida.re/docs/frida-ps/
frida-trace - https://www.frida.re/docs/frida-trace/
gplaycli - https://github.com/matlink/gplaycli
InsecureBankv2 - https://github.com/dineshshetty/Android-InsecureBankv2
Inspeckage - https://github.com/ac-pm/Inspeckage
JAADAS - https://github.com/flankerhqd/JAADAS
JustTrustMe - https://github.com/Fuzion24/JustTrustMe
Magisk Modules repository - https://github.com/Magisk-Modules-Repo
Magisk Trust User Certs module - https://github.com/NVISO-BE/MagiskTrustUserCerts/releases
Mitm-relay - https://github.com/jrmdev/mitm_relay
Nathan - https://github.com/mseclab/nathan
Objection - https://github.com/sensepost/objection
R2frida - https://github.com/nowsecure/r2frida/
Radare2 - https://rada.re/r/
SSLUnpinning - https://github.com/ac-pm/SSLUnpinning_Xposed
Wireshark - https://www.wireshark.org/
