iCamasu

For the iOS updates security research I presented at both RootedCON and Area41 this year (more details will be published in an upcoming blog post... still waiting for a fix!), I processed and analyzed (several times and in multiple ways over the last 2.5 years) the PLIST files used by Apple devices to check for new iOS updates. Since iOS 5, and due to the new OTA (Over-the-Air) update capabilities introduced with that version, every time a new iOS update is available, a new file containing the list of official iOS versions and the mobile devices supported by each of them is published at http://mesu.apple.com/assets/com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdate/
com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdate.xml, together with the associated iOS documentation file, available at http://mesu.apple.com/assets/com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdateDocumentation/
com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdateDocumentation.xml.

iCamasu, iOS com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdate, is a Python-based tool that parses and extracts multiple details from Apple iOS software update PLIST files,"com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdate.xml" (BTW, the tool does not parse the associated documentation files).

iCamasu provides multiple parsing options to select the input file (-f), extract the minimum (-m) and maximum (-M) iOS versions currently available, show a brief summary (-s or -S) including the SHA-1 hash for the file and its size, the number of assets or entries, devices, and iOS versions, and allows classifying the current iOS versions by device (-D) or iOS version (-I). Additionally it includes search capabilities by device (-d) or iOS version (-i), and a more verbose output and extended details via the "-v" and "-F" options.

iCamasu usage examples:

If you plan to do any iOS research related with new updates or iOS versions, I hope you find iCamasu useful to easily dig deeply into the PLIST file contents. As usual, the tool is available at DinoSec's Lab (where future major versions will be published too) and also in the new DinoSec GitHub repository, in case you want to contribute updates and feedback. The first public version is 0.41, as for the Area41 conference where it was released, and runs on Linux, OS X and Windows.