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  1. is there a loopback interface in iOS (iPad, iPhone)?

  2. And if yes, can it be used to securely communicate between two applications/threads within iOS?

  3. Will any other application run iOS can snoop and it data traffic over loopback interface between two applications?

Eimantas
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user2548414
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    Attention close voters: this isn't asking for a library recommendation. – Shog9 Sep 23 '13 at 19:18
  • This is perfectly valid question IMO since it asks about availability of a darwin API which is otherwise available on non-iOS environments. – Ben S Sep 23 '13 at 19:20

2 Answers2

4
  1. No -- lo isn't available in the iOS Darwin tools.
  2. N/A
  3. N/A

If you're looking to have two applications communicate securely, this answer has a few different solutions which might suit you.

Community
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Ben S
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  • thanks, in that case how will an UIWebview based App communicate its Websocket server running in background as a thread ? – user2548414 Sep 23 '13 at 19:18
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    You would have to add a layer in the app that implements `UIWebViewDelegate` and does the required work. Likely in the `webView:shouldStartLoadWithRequest:navigationType:` method. – Ben S Sep 23 '13 at 19:19
  • thank you so much, another related question: is it possible of any other App on iOS be able to snoop the websocket traffic between app (i.e UIWebView based client ) with its background websocket server thread ? Note: All these apps and services are running locally on the same iOS device. – user2548414 Sep 23 '13 at 19:26
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    You should consider asking that as a separate question, @user2548414. Others might benefit from the answer... – Shog9 Sep 23 '13 at 19:27
  • ok, posted the above websocket data traffic snooping as separate question. – user2548414 Sep 23 '13 at 19:38
  • I found that an iOS App which has some components of it written in native C/C++ code can access loopback address 127.0.0.1 and use it for exchanging data between threads/processes within iOS device. – user2548414 Sep 24 '13 at 17:49
  • @user2548414 What library did you have to link against to achieve this? – Ben S Sep 24 '13 at 18:24
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I see the thread is quite old and realize things may have changed, but I thought I'd share what I've found on my phone.

The reason I'm here was because I was thinking my "unhackable" Apple device had been hacked. Still working on this.
But here's a list of my interfaces. 

Ap1,  awdl0,  en0,  en1,  lo0,<==  pdp_ip0,  pdp_ip1,  pdp_ip2

And it's running, not sure if I misunderstood that one may be available in general just not running Darwin. But in either case I am running Darwin.

Dharmesh Porwal
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Francois Heroez
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