iOS Reverse Engineering

iOS security overview & reverse engineering toolsHabr

ipa package analysis

ipa is essentially a zip file.

ipa file root structures

• iTunes Artwork--a PNG app icon for showing in iTunes and the App Store.

• iTunesMetadata.plist—Contains copyright information, release date, purchase date, name of the developer and company who created it, etc.

• /Payload/Application.app

To repack the ipa, simple select the three files and folder listed above and right click and select compress. The Archive.zip you get can be install using ideviceinstaller. You can also rename the file name you wanted.

You can also use script.

cd <the-directory-that-store-the-three-files-and-folder>
zip -0 -y -r out.ipa .
#or use
zip -0  --symlinks --recurse-paths out.ipa .
# the `out.ipa` is the result