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Leon Jacobs - Meticulously Modern Mobile Manipulations

Leon Jacobs

Presents a systematic methodology for intercepting and manipulating traffic from modern mobile applications that implement certificate pinning and root detection.

Summary

Modern Mobile App Interception

Leon Jacobs presents practical techniques for intercepting and manipulating network traffic from modern Android and iOS applications that implement multiple layers of anti-analysis protections.

Certificate Pinning Bypass

The talk covers bypassing certificate pinning using Frida dynamic instrumentation, hooking the platform SSL libraries at the function level to override pinning checks. For apps with multiple pinning layers (HTTPS, WebSocket, gRPC), Jacobs demonstrates a systematic bypass methodology.

Root/Jailbreak Detection Bypass

Root and jailbreak detection checks using file system probes, package manager queries, and native code integrity checks are bypassed using Magisk Hide (Android) and Liberty Lite (iOS), with Frida hooks handling any remaining programmatic checks.

Deep Traffic Analysis

With interception established, the talk demonstrates modifying API responses in transit, replaying authenticated requests with modified parameters, and extracting API keys and session tokens from intercepted traffic.

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