Offensive Mobile Malware Analysis

The Offensive Mobile Malware Analysis course is designed to give a proper understanding of malware threats aimed at iOS and Android platforms. With a focus on mobile OS internals, mobile device vulnerabilities, attack vectors, and security mitigations, this course provides hands-on experience and practical insights. The curriculum begins with an in-depth exploration of iOS and Android architectures, focusing on their security features and platform specific APIs. Participants gain a comprehensive understanding of the challenges posed by modern mobile malware, including obfuscation, anti-detection techniques, and exploit delivery. The course covers sandboxing and the attack surface available from a sandboxed app, and later also discusses creation of jailbreaks and exploits. It also offers a comprehensive insight into reversing Objective-C, Swift, Java, Kotlin and Smali code, as well as native Android and iOS binaries. The curriculum also covers advanced Frida techniques, such as custom tracing, profiling, and advanced memory inspection, with practical application in real-world scenarios. Through case studies of prominent malware like Pegasus, Joker, MasterFred, Hermit, and Cerberus and several custom malware samples designed for the course, the course sheds light on reverse engineering, advanced forensics techniques, and extracting and analyzing forensic artifacts. It concludes with insights into future research opportunities.