Emulating iOS 14 in QEMU: From Black Screen to Home Screen

2025-06-12
Emulating iOS 14 in QEMU: From Black Screen to Home Screen

This blog post details the journey of emulating iOS 14 on QEMU. The team overcame numerous hurdles, including analyzing system logs, userspace debugging (leveraging dyld cache symbols and the gdb stub), and bypassing data migration and SEP-related code. Through patching, clever workarounds (like utilizing iOS accessibility mode), they achieved booting, unlocking, multitouch support, network connectivity, and even the ability to install and run arbitrary IPA files. The post meticulously describes the technical details, showcasing the team's expertise and perseverance.

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Development

Emulating iOS on QEMU: A Challenging Journey

2025-04-05
Emulating iOS on QEMU: A Challenging Journey

This article details a team's journey in emulating iOS on QEMU. Starting with existing open-source projects, they leveraged checkra1n and PongoOS to bypass iOS security mechanisms. They overcame numerous challenges including software rendering, IOMFB display issues, address randomization, and Pointer Authentication (PAC). The team developed tools to generate and apply Mach-O patches and injected shellcode to simulate USB pairing. Ultimately, they successfully displayed the iOS boot screen and unlock interface on QEMU, showcasing a remarkable achievement.

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Development iOS emulator