Encryption - a curse and a blessing at the same time

Digital communication in today’s world has a particularly high status in our society. Financial transactions are conducted via online banking, private communication is increasingly limited to digital messenger services, and even health data is experiencing a shift to digital form. Due to the growth of such sensitive digital data, the need for secure transmission of such data has become increasingly important over the past decades. With the introduction of high-performance and digitally secure cryptographic methods, such as SSL/TLS, today’s digital communications are predominantly encrypted. Whereas back then, for example, an attacker could hang himself between the client and the server and read the data traffic without encryption, today all he sees is a jumble of letters. Encryption is truly a boon for protecting sensitive personal data, but it also has its drawbacks, as with almost everything. Encrypted communications negate the ability to analyze communications, which is very relevant when reverse engineering malware or researching vulnerabilities.

Make Frida Great Again

In order to analyse binaries on e.g. Android systems, one is offered a plethora of tools to use to figure out what a binary is doing, whether it is malicious or just buggy. One way to figure out the behaviour of a binary is to utilise the strength of dynamic analysis. Under linux, i.e. Android in particular, Frida is a tool that is used for automated instrumentation of binaries, to inspect memory, function calls etc.