Debugger Detection

Debugging via Debuggers is a legitimate feature used by developers for analyzing and fixing errors (bugs) in applications. However, when employed maliciously, this technique can be exploited to halt the application's execution, inspect memory contents in real time, access sensitive variables such as passwords, cryptographic keys and tokens, and also allow modification of the execution flow step by step.

Debugger detection in MAD for iOS was designed to operate continuously and resiliently, even in the face of advanced evasion techniques frequently used by analysts and attackers. To achieve this, the module combines different approaches, ranging from low-level checks in the operating system to execution behavior analysis.

For application security, MAD is capable of detecting the embedding of the debugger in the application and mitigating potential attackers in order to better analyze the application and alert about possible attacks coming from the given device. The settings related to this detection can be adjusted in the configuration file config_sample.plist.

<key>anti-debugging</key>
    <true>