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I'm trying to do examine some apps and what kind of network traffic they're using on my iPhone.

I've set up Charles (including SSL certificates & provisioning profiles). Then, I tethered my laptop to my iPad to get a connection, and then shared that internet with my iPhone via WiFi.

For some reason, the apps I'm working with seem to think that they're not online. Safari works with this set up.

What are my options for seamlessly sending network traffic to a Mac for analysis, without jailbreaking?

If it matters, I'm running iOS 5.1 on an iPhone 4 and Mac OS X Lion on the white plastic unibody (Mid-2010) MacBook.

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Have you heard of Ettercap? I use it cough daily cough. It's MITM at its finest. I'll write a nice answer about it if you'd like to hear more. Based on what you've described (and based on that article), it should do what you want. – Andrew Larsson Apr 16 '12 at 19:19
Please do write about it. :-) – Moshe Apr 16 '12 at 19:30
so do they have a connection when you don't have Charles running? And your iPad is the one providing the internet conenction over USB? – Jonathan. Apr 17 '12 at 15:41

3 Answers

up vote 0 down vote

While connected to the same Wifi, won't WireShark do exactly what you want?

Extracted from WireShark's documentation page

1.1.2. Features

The following are some of the many features Wireshark provides:

  • Available for UNIX and Windows.
  • Capture live packet data from a network interface.
  • Display packets with very detailed protocol information.
  • Open and Save packet data captured.
  • Import and Export packet data from and to a lot of other capture programs.
  • Filter packets on many criteria.
  • Search for packets on many criteria.
  • Colorize packet display based on filters.
  • Create various statistics.

... and a lot more!

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Hrm... Maybe... Except I can't send spoofed network traffic to my iOS device, can I? – Moshe Apr 12 '12 at 14:37
I guess not. As It's said in the Documentation Page: "Wireshark will not manipulate things on the network, it will only "measure" things from it. Wireshark doesn't send packets on the network or do other active things (except for name resolutions, but even that can be disabled)." – Thecafremo Apr 12 '12 at 15:16
Well, it's still a start, for examining what the app is expecting. – Moshe Apr 12 '12 at 15:24
WireShark is good for your purpose. – revolver Apr 12 '12 at 15:42
up vote 1 down vote

Use mitmproxy. It's proven for this sort of thing. A while back there was some uproar about the app Path uploading the adressbook to its servers. This was what was used to discover it. The guy wrote up how he used it and that's a nice intro on how to install and use mitmproxy.

enter image description here

From the site :

mitmproxy is an SSL-capable man-in-the-middle HTTP proxy. It provides a console interface that allows traffic flows to be inspected and edited on the fly.

mitmdump is the command-line version of mitmproxy, with the same functionality but without the frills. Think tcpdump for HTTP. Features

  • Intercept and modify HTTP traffic on the fly
  • Save HTTP conversations for later replay and analysis
  • Replay both HTTP clients and servers
  • Make scripted changes to HTTP traffic using Python
  • SSL interception certs generated on the fly
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up vote -1 down vote

Debookee is a network traffic analyzer such as Wireshark, but it can also intercept the network traffic of any device on your network.

Simply scan your network, you'll see all devices, select your iPhone as a Target, launch the analyzer and you will see all the traffic of your iPhone, without need of jailbreak or tethering.

The protocols shown are: HTTP, HTTPS, DHCP, DNS, TCP, SIP ...

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Please read apple.stackexchange.com/faq#promotion before promoting your own product. – patrix♦ Dec 2 '12 at 10:58

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