Can we create a Firewall application for iPhone (iOS 4.x) - iphone

I am looking for intercepting all TCP traffic on iPhone (iOS 4.x). I have searched on iOS Developer Library but could not find anything.
I want to create a standalone application that would run in background (as Firewall). This application should intercept all TCP traffic, no matter which application has initiated it (Safari, Mail etc.). Is it possible on iPhone?
On iPhone can we somehow redirect all network traffic to Loopback-URL (localhost)?
Thanks!

Not even slightly possible on a normal iPhone, sorry!
It might be possible if it's jailbroken but even then, I'm not sure.

Of course it is possible on JB devices and as a matter of fact they already released on Cydia an app called Firewall iP by Yllier and it does the job great with all TCP and UDP communication.

Related

Communication between iOS app in one Wi-Fi network w/o server

I need to communicate my app with 2 devices. A restriction is that I can't use a server but all iOS devices will be in one Wi-Fi network. What options do I have? How I can send a message to another copy of my app running on another device?
I dont know whether its a correct approach or not but as you cannot use server,so the approach i can think of is we can create a socket connection using TCP/IP or UDP(based on reliability) for data exchange.
I dont think you can communicate between 2 devices running the same application without having some kind of server application in-between.
Even if you could find the other device over the WIFI I dont think you can tell if the other device is running the app or not.
I think you may be referring to MultipeerConnectivity
The Multipeer Connectivity framework provides support for discovering
services provided by nearby iOS devices using infrastructure Wi-Fi
networks, peer-to-peer Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth personal area networks and
subsequently communicating with those services by sending
message-based data, streaming data, and resources (such as files).
Source: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/MultipeerConnectivity/Reference/MultipeerConnectivityFramework/
Apple Sample:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/samplecode/MultipeerGroupChat/Introduction/Intro.html

if I have an iphone's IP address is there anyway I can communicate with it?

are there any services running by default on an iphone that would let another ip address communicate with it if the iphone's ip is known?
Yes, technically, you can. There are a couple of issues though:
Mobile IP addresses usually change
When the phone is in sleep mode, its network interface is probably not reachable.
So I don't think you can rely on that for initiating a communication with the phone.
There aren't many options out of the box on a non jail-broken phone. However, you can write your own client application that runs on the phone. It accepts or initiates the remote connection.
And in that case, the protocol is entirely up to you.
If you jailbreak your phone, you can install the OpenSSH package and have SSH and SFTP access to your phone.
I don't know exactly what you want to do with your app, but you can consider create a thread detached from the main one (using gcd) and use it to send/receive informations from a server using JSON objects for example. Sure you can use sockets and write a client or something like that.
I suggested a new thread because you can put it running forever (on a enterprise app, I don't know if Apple will approve a thread running on an App for AppStore).
I had to develop an app with a consistent client/server relationship and it was the way I got it working.

How can I send simple data from an iPhone to another iPhone, or an Android?

I'm just getting started with mobile development, and after considerable searching I'm still confused about sending a message from my iPhone to another or an Android. For instance, in building a simple Tic-Tac-Toe game, if I want to notify the other phone of a move, what is the best way to do so? Wifi, bluetooth, 3G? And how?
Many methods seem to point to communicating through a web server, but I'd rather send them directly from phone to phone if possible. (this is for native apps of course)
If you don't want to have a server (or even if you do! It depends!) it sounds like you will want to use TCP sockets. Apple doesn't have a generic bluetooth API to use with iPhone-to-android communication and you'll have TCP access anyway with 3G. A 3G network connection is very similar to wifi and you should be able to check for the difference as needed with little change to your overall networking code. I'm not sure if bonjour is supported on android, but I bet someone has ported it for similar reasons already, and it is supported in iOS. Apple has a networking section for iOS that you may find informative.
Additionally if you want to stay within the iOS device only realm you could use GameKit to communicate via bluetooth.
Hope that helps some.
The easiest way is to create a web server with an API and the clients poll the server for new moves (or the server pushes the client an update). This is the only way you're going to be able to do it over 3G unless you can figure out the IP addresses of both phones (do phones even keep the same IP address for a long period of time?) and open up sockets between them and let one phone be the server and the other be the client (could cause potential cheating).
WiFi is not always there - by limiting your users' options to areas with access points, you'll lose sales. Not sure about Bluetooth - how prevalent is it on handsets, how much of the API is exposed. Your best bet, IMHO, is 3G. With some kind of a central presence server (Web or otherwise), with optional proxying. Read up on peer-to-peer networking.
As far as i know does the iphone only support incoming messages over push notifications.
This means, that you have to update the information, by requesting it from web services etc.
The bluetooth API of the iphone doesn't support this either.

iPhone - Browsing iPhone files through computer

I want to be able to send files from an iPhone app to a computer. What would be the easiest way of doing this?
I've made simple server client programs before, but in those, the client has always needed to connect to the server before being able to receive messages from it. There is an app for the iPhone called iSimulate, where you put a server on a Mac (the iPhone simulator), and then you use the iSimulate app of an iTouch or iPhone to send touch events to the server. This app does not require you to type in an ip-address. Instead it presents a list of available computers that have this server up and running.
How exactly is this being done? Can a server broadcast a message over a network, w/o anyone being connected to the server? How does that work? How does a client listen for that broadcast?
Here's a video of the app I'm talking about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3Qpd1ycZh4
alt text http://a1.phobos.apple.com/us/r1000/051/Purple/7b/07/70/mzl.mvwjifyc.320x480-75.jpg
That app may be using Bonjour.
I've seen similar apps use a peer-to-peer Bluetooth connection to exchange files between a iPhone and a desktop.

iPhone interaction between PC app and iPhone app using USB

I know since the 3.0 SDK we can use accessories, so my question is simple, what is the process to make an iPhone app and PC (or Mac) app interact, using the USB ?
I don't ask you any code, but just the paths and the keys for making that work.
Have I to access the iPhone disk through SSH and work with files ?
Or can I send data from the iPhone app and intercept (get) it on the PC app (and send data from PC to iPhone) ?
Thanks, and if this question is stupid, just tell me, I didn't find on Dev Center (I don't really know what I have to looking for...) !
Edit : I read some news from Microids, they will synchronize PC and iPhone games (i.g here), and somewhere (I can't find it again) they say connecting the iPhone on the USB, so I think this is possible
USB access on the phone is only supported via the External Accessory Framework. You cannot hook the iPhone up to arbitrary USB devices, the devices actually have to support the EA protocol. You can get more details about it via the Made for iPhone program.
Other than that there is no USB access available on to applications.
You want the External Accessory Framework. Having said that, I'm not sure that Apple's intention was for you to communicate with an application on a PC/Mac. It's really for talking to accessories such as iPod docks, remote controls, etc. Apple may not allow an application that talks to a PC in this manner in the App Store.
You might be interested in ssh_relay (earlier called iphone_tunnel).
There is a /System/Library/Lockdown/Services.plist on your iPhone and you can start any such services via AMDeviceStartService and then communicate with it.
The ssh_relay demonstrates how to do that by having a simple port forwarder as a service on the iPhone site and the client application on your PC, so you can forward any local iPhone port to your PC. This is not exactly what you wants here (it is handy in the case you have already another service running on the iPhone which communicates via simple TCP and you want to access that; for example SSH) but based on this example, it should be straight-forward to have any communication between the service (in Services.plist) and your PC.