The Mobile Application Hacker's Handbook

CHAPTER 14Analyzing BlackBerry Applications

BlackBerry was the dominant smartphone platform for business in the early to mid-2000s. Although its dominance has been in severe decline, you may still need to analyze applications for it at some time.

This chapter provides an introduction to the BlackBerry platforms, some of the security traits you need to be aware of, and the tools required to get you into a position to analyze a BlackBerry application. We then discuss some specific high-level analysis techniques for BlackBerry 10 apps. This material does not cover BlackBerry 10 Adobe AIR–based apps because support for them is deprecated in 10.3.1. For BlackBerry Legacy we provide a condensed overview of the platform and analysis techniques.

Fundamentally, recognizing that BlackBerry apps (both Legacy and 10) are on the whole developed using common technologies, such as Java, C/C++ (ELF), HTML5, and JavaScript is important, and as such understanding the platform-specific aspects and tooling is important because most if not all of the language-specific issues carry over from other platforms that use similar technologies.

Understanding BlackBerry Legacy

BlackBerry Legacy is the platform that is 7.x and earlier. This platform was in the market during BlackBerry's dominant era in the SmartPhone market. Although it isn't the latest it does still continue to have strong representation in certain subsectors and emerging markets. Due to this legacy coupled with representation in certain ...