Creating backup of installed apps under iOS 9/10 via SSH ramdisk [Guide]

[userse31]

Lets say you have some software installed on an iOS 9/10 device, but you can't jailbreak/mount the AFC2 paths because the device is icloud bypassed, what are you supposed to do?

I'll be using an iPhone 5c that I got off eBay listed as icloud locked. It was some plumbing company's leased phone return, probably originally part of a fleet of employee used devices.

First, enter DFU mode.

(Now brilliantly, the home button on my specimen just, died. It was working fine tuesday morning, but over the afternoon and into the evening it just, died. I did use it on my walk where the weather was cold, so maybe the cold killed it?)

Run "./restore.sh". Go to "Other Utilities", "SSH Ramdisk", and where it says using ios 9.0.2, do that! Type "13A452" and press enter. (I'm guessing that specific version plays ball with sshd.)

Once logged in, run "mount.sh" to mount both data and system partitions.

Software installed from the App Store is located at "/mnt2/containers/Bundle/Application". Each program's respective data (eg, game saves) is located at "/mnt2/mobile/Containers/Data". (The "%s.app" """"folders"""" under Containers/Data are actually symbolic links, which are broken under the SSH ramdisk.)

But, people don't care about your okayish house in Minecraft. They may, however, be interested in the obscure apps you have installed!

In a new terminal, run "sftp -P 2222 -oHostKeyAlgorithms=+ssh-rsa [email protected]"

Change directory into "/mnt2/containers/Bundle". Then, run "get -r ./Application".

This will dump the code portion of each installed app into the working directory of sftp (the folder the terminal was located in when you ran "sftp").

-Creating IPA's-
An IPA is a zip file with only one folder in it's root: "Payload"; Inside "Payload" is the app folder "%s.app", with "%s" being the internal name of the app.

Don't include "ItunesArtwork" or "iTunesMetadata.plist", that is how you accidentally dox yourself.

For example, lets archive "PaintOnPhotos.app"

Inside it's parent folder (the one with iTunesMetadata.plist) create the folder "Payload" and move "PaintOnPhotos.app" into it.

Afterwards, zip it up with "zip -r ./paintonphotos.ipa ./Payload".

You will now have your IPA file.