MANIAC

Description

MANIAC is a modern dynamic binary instrumentation engine for Android and Fuchsia.

Demo

See maniac_demo. The demo module hijacks the target application's rand() function and makes it return a fixed value of 1337.

Project Structure

• maniac_manager: A Flutter-based frontend for managing modules.
• maniacd: Process-detection watchdog that monitors zygote.
• maniacj: The library injector module.
• maniacli: Set of command line tools for developing MANIAC modules.
• maniacrun: The IPC/bootstrap program.

FAQ

How does it differ from Xposed?

The aims are similar, but implementation details greatly differ.

• MANIAC modules work further down the stack, as the engine primarily instruments native code as opposed to ART/Dalvik. Without the constraints of the process VM, MANIAC modules are far more capable.
• MANIAC requires no permanent modification of the host system, as it only needs a single root-privileged process to bootstrap the runtime environment.

Where can I find more modules to install?

The project is currently in a pre-alpha stage and no official modules repository exist as of yet. Refer to the maniac_demo project for building your own modules.

Technical Details (WIP)

Execution Flow

Users may install pre-programmed modules via MANIAC manager. maniacrun bootstraps the DBI environment by communicating with various sub-modules of MANIAC.

+----------+             +----------+
| manager  |             | maniacd  |
+----------+             +----------+
     |                         |
     | on user command         | on zygote fork
     |                         |
     V                         V
+-----------------------------------+
|              maniacrun            |
+-----------------------------------+
                  | with contol.json
     +-------------------------+
     |            |            |
     V            V            V
+----------+             +----------+
| maniacj  |     ...     | maniacx  |
+----------+             +----------+

Project Timeline

2018

• initial public release

2019

• libmaniac_gui

2020

• initial Fuchsia support

202x

• libmaniac_art
• libmaniac_mono

Copying

All of the components are free software released under the GNU General Public License (GPLv3) unless otherwise stated. Refer to the individual repository for more information.

Prior Art

• CydiaSubstrate (@saurik)
• Liberation (@Razzilient)
• Frida (frida.re)