WILEY iOS Hacker's Handbook

I preordered this book so I have been reading it for about a week now. It is a wonderful book on security research for iOS devices. Don't expect to write a jailbreak for the newest devices after reading this book though, as that would require much experience in writing exploits, fuzzing, kernel debugging and ROP, which is completely understandable. It is foolish to believe that reading one book will allow you to write jailbreaks and find exploits with ease. The book begins covering sandboxing, code signing and iOS enterprise applications, and their weaknesses. The chapter on fuzzing was very explanatory on the techniques used to do so. It covered fuzzing PDF and powerpoint documents in mobile safari, as well as SMS fuzzing. The next chapter talks about exploitation on iOS devices, focusing on heap exploits and in turn, memory allocation and deallocation. The chapter on ROP explains what is capable and not capable with return oriented programming, and gives two great examples of such techniques. Following that is a chapter on kernel exploitation, describing how to reverse the IOKit kernel drivers and finding vulnerabilities, as well as how to exploit vulnerabilities once found. This chapter concludes with a demonstration on the heap fang shui technique used for heap buffer overflow exploits. The jailbreaking chapter is not particularly long, but that is because the techniques used have been described in other parts of the book. This chapter examines the redsn0w jailbreak and describes each step performed by it, including the different kernel patches applied by the jailbreak. The final chapter covers baseband hacking, which I have not read in detail yet. It appears, at first glance, to cover general knowledge on cell networks leading into the RTOS used on the baseband chips, and ending with a description of the ultrasn0w unlock. Overall, I would recommend anyone who is interested in the techniques and steps used to find vulnerabilities and exploit them, leading to the development of a jailbreak for an iOS device.

For anybody who is interested of iOS it's really a complete book! I recommend it The first chapter is a good summary and after all chapter go in detail.

This book is a must for any person with responsibility for securing IOS within a corporate environment, it highlights in easy to understand language the techniques that have been historically used in hacking IOS devices, giving a good grounding in the prevention needed to prevent this.

iOS Hacker's Handbook offers a good overview about the security mechanisms and possible strategies to overcome them. The way current hacking techniques are being introduced, should enable less experienced programmers and enthusiast to get started and the more advanced reader will find a very well processed compendium (and more). About the troll comments further down: Some are obviously misinterpreting this book's intention. It's not about giving you a detailed tutorial on how to create a jailbreak, but to give a starting point, to introduce techniques needed and to motivate you to start learning and researching (btw. this belongs to security RESEARCH). Creating a jailbreak needs weeks and months of work, not to mention the vast experience and skills needed to pull of such a major task. One book can't accomplish that. So if you really want to become the next comex or pod2g: get off your backside, learn basics, read this book, read more materials, train your obtained skills and at the end of the road you might be able to develop your own exploits which will lead to a jailbreak.

I pre-ordered this book months ago, and got exactly what I was looking for: an in depth look at iOS security. It doesn't just talk about the present, but also takes a look at how far iOS has came since version 1. You'll find little details throughout that give you insight to some of the events and vulnerabilities that the authors (and others) were involved in. Great buy, especially if you're looking to learn more about mobile security.