Almost booting an iOS kernel in QEMU

by ProfDreamer • 8 years ago

121 19 8 years ago

mirimir• 8 years ago

Interesting. I would love virtual iPhones. For testing apps, anonymously. But I doubt that I'd get an invite from Corellium, either :(

Ecco• 8 years ago

Reads as an ad for Corellium...

return_0e• 8 years ago

..but XNU is now open source.

Well XNU has always been 'open-source' [1] for some time on Intel machines but its just that ARM support remained closed (until 2017) which is why the darwin-on-arm [2] project existed. But I'm assuming that the OP means that the ARM64 code was recently open-sourced in the XNU sources[3] making a possible open-source ARM port much simpler. I still find it quite interesting to see some regained attempts in emulating iOS; with Corellium being the furthest at doing this.

[1] (https://opensource.apple.com)

[2] (https://github.com/darwin-on-arm/xnu)

[3] (https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/search?p=5&q=ARM64&unsco...)

w0utert• 8 years ago

In a way, it seems strange nobody made a full-blown iPhone/iPad iOS emulator yet. Not a simulator like the one Apple makes, but an emulator like for game systems. I would guess the amount of information available about iPhone hardware and software would make it much easier to emulate than e.g. a gamecube, Wii, PS3, etc, especially for older models. Such an emulator could obviously be used for piracy, but could also be an intersting tool for a homebrew scene (custom firmware, developing iOS apps on Linux & Windows, etc.

Is there a practical reason why this would be hard or impossible? Or is it just for fear of Apple's lawyers?

rjvbk2• 8 years ago

It seems strange to me that there are no Chinese OEMs selling mobiles with iOS. I mean, I understand it's hard, but is it THAT hard?

ofrzeta• 8 years ago

You would probably need to hack the OS to disable updates etc to prevent Apple from remotely bricking your device.

mschuster91• 8 years ago

Yeah it is because the CPU and GPU are customized for Apple. You'd have to recreate them (which probably would require a F500 company like Amazon or Google) or write a translation layer similar to WINE (which would need a couple dozen expert coders). Not worth the effort for knockoff phones.

KenanSulayman• 8 years ago

It seems Corellium (linked to from the blogpost) has done that. That said, it seems they only run iPhone 6, et al., which was jailbroken (untethered), so it's significantly easier to emulate than trying to run the only unencrypted file (kernel cache) targeting an undocumented CPU with Qemu of an iOS beta that was released a few days ago.

willstrafach• 8 years ago

Corellium can run up to iPhone X, and certainly can run iOS 12 (Option is given for jailbroken or not jailbroken too).

Only limit which you may be thinking of is that it only supports 64-bit ARM, so no emulation of the older devices.

Almost booting an iOS kernel in QEMU

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