DocumentCode :
2577935
Title :
Reverse Engineering iOS Mobile Applications
Author :
Joorabchi, Mona Erfani ; Mesbah, Ali
Author_Institution :
Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
fYear :
2012
fDate :
15-18 Oct. 2012
Firstpage :
177
Lastpage :
186
Abstract :
As a result of the ubiquity and popularity of smart phones, the number of third party mobile applications is explosively growing. With the increasing demands of users for new dependable applications, novel software engineering techniques and tools geared towards the mobile platform are required to support developers in their program comprehension and analysis tasks. In this paper, we propose a reverse engineering technique that automatically (1) hooks into, dynamically runs, and analyzes a given iOS mobile application, (2) exercises its user interface to cover the interaction state space and extracts information about the runtime behaviour, and (3) generates a state model of the given application, capturing the user interface states and transitions between them. Our technique is implemented in a tool called iCrawler. To evaluate our technique, we have conducted a case study using six open-source iPhone applications. The results indicate that iCrawler is capable of automatically detecting the unique states and generating a correct model of a given mobile application.
Keywords :
graphical user interfaces; mobile computing; operating systems (computers); public domain software; reverse engineering; smart phones; software tools; ICRAWLER; analysis tasks; iOS mobile applications; information extraction; interaction state space; open-source iPhone applications; program comprehension; reverse engineering technique; runtime behaviour; smart phones; software engineering techniques; software tools; third party mobile applications; user interface states; user interface transitions; Graphical user interfaces; Mobile communication; Navigation; Reverse engineering; Runtime; Testing; iOS; mobile applications; model generation; reverse engineering;
fLanguage :
English
Publisher :
ieee
Conference_Titel :
Reverse Engineering (WCRE), 2012 19th Working Conference on
Conference_Location :
Kingston, ON
ISSN :
1095-1350
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4673-4536-1
Type :
conf
DOI :
10.1109/WCRE.2012.27
Filename :
6385113
Link To Document :
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