New: references/signature-derived-keys.md (apps that use their own signing certificate as crypto key material: detection greps, why offline extraction is unreliable -- the runtime value is a certificate DER from inside the PKCS#7 chain, not the .RSA container -- plus the hardcode-then-verify procedure); scripts/sig_probe.py (offline candidates via --apk, authoritative read via --live, both exercised); pitfalls.md P27 (rebuilt APK installs and renders but every signed request returns empty/-1 signing params).
Updated: dynamic-frida.md (attach by PID when enumerate_processes omits the target; verify runtime/Java-bridge availability before blaming the script); runtime-data.md (MMKV format, parse/write snippet, crc32 and in-memory-overwrite traps); server-api.md (route the signature-derived-key case to the new reference); SKILL.md and README.md (new classification question, corrected question count, index entries).
Generalized from a long hardened-target engagement. Additions target the failure
modes that cost the most time and are not yet covered; nothing here is sample-specific.
New discipline
- SKILL.md: a third override rule -- deliver in the environment the request requires.
A root-only or live-instrumentation result can look like success while failing the
actual requirement (unrooted, installable, self-contained). Also adds two classify
questions: what form the deliverable must take, and which architecture/library is
actually executing.
- long-task-discipline.md: "the most expensive drift" -- a constraint table (privilege,
modification form, ABI, network, persistence, distribution), the checkpoint question,
and how to report a privileged workaround as a fallback rather than a deliverable.
Plus "bound every wait": timeouts on every command, budgets calibrated from
measurement so slow and hung are distinguishable, and sampling an observable you can
inspect instead of sleeping blind.
- environment.md: look at the screen instead of driving blind; which of the two screen
evidence kinds is trustworthy (an empty accessibility tree is common for
runtime-rendered UI, where the image is primary rather than a fallback); emulator
console control and adb recovery; preflight before every experiment block.
- native-and-so.md: what the device claims vs what the package manager chose vs what is
actually mapped; translation layers and their consequences for hooks and native
checks; fat-APK ABI selection.
- runtime-data.md: when the app rewrites your edit (server refresh vs local
regeneration), why chmod/chown cannot work because the app deletes and recreates the
file, and the immutable-attribute fix; decoding a value that only looks encrypted.
- framework-runtimes.md: string encoding traps (a UTF-8 scan of a UTF-16 snapshot
returns nothing and reads as "the strings were stripped"), and non-ASCII obfuscated
identifiers -- resolve by shape, not by name.
- pitfalls.md: P23 the fix lives in a file the app rewrites; P24 the artifact changed
but the wrong one is executing; P25 "search found nothing" treated as "not there".
New scripts (parameterized, path-agnostic, all with explicit timeouts)
- preflight.py environment check: device, root, ABI/translation, clock skew, leftover
proxy/forwards, dead device server, chosen ABI, free space
- lib_map.py what is actually mapped into a live process: path, base, architecture
from the ELF header, and whether it came from the APK or was
materialized at runtime
- blob_decode.py search (don't guess) the framing of a stored value, then re-encode the
edited payload with the same parameters
- snap.py bounded burst screenshots + control-tree capture, with a stall detector
and an explicit verdict on whether the tree is usable
All four were exercised against a live device while writing: preflight correctly
flags multi-device ambiguity and detected the ARM translation layer; lib_map read real
ELF headers and identified the translation shim; blob_decode round-tripped a
rotation+deflate+base64 blob at realistic size in ~0.2s; snap detected a stalled screen
across three hashes.
inliver233