Binder Trace: a tool for intercepting and parsing Android Binder messages

Binder Trace

Binder Trace is a tool for intercepting and parsing Android Binder messages. Think of it as "Wireshark for Binder".

⚙️ Installation

You'll need a rooted Android device or emulator.

(Linux only) - install xclip or xsel for "copy to clipboard" functionality

sudo apt-get install xclip
sudo apt-get install xsel`

Clone the repo and install python dependencies

pip install -r binder_trace/requirements.txt

Check which version of frida is installed (make sure you've pip installed the requirements)

pip list | grep frida

Download the matching version of frida-server from the frida releases page

Make sure adb is running as root, push frida-server to your device and run it

adb root

adb push frida-server /data/local/tmp

chmod u+x /data/local/tmp/frida-server

adb shell /data/local/tmp/frida-server

▶️ Starting binder trace

To start binder trace we need to pick a device and process to attach to. In the following example we use adb and frida-ps to identify a process to attach to on a local emulator. As it's an Android 11 emulator we choose the Android 11 structs directory. Pick the struct directory that most closely matches your version of Android. If you would like structures for a different version of Android, please let us know. Once it's running start using the target app to generate some binder transactions.

adb devices
List of devices attached
emulator-5554 device

frida-ps -Ua
PID Name Identifier

---

8334 Messaging com.android.messaging
7941 Phone com.android.dialer
9607 Settings com.android.settings

cd binder_trace
python -m binder_trace -d emulator-5554 -n Messaging -s ../structs/android11

⌨️ Controls

Key Action
up Move up
down Move down
shift + up Page up
shift + down Page down
home Go to top
end Go to bottom
tab Next pane
shift + tab Previous pane
ctrl + c Copy pane to clipboard
f Open filter options
h Open help
q Quit

🔎 Filtering

If you're interested in specific messages you can filter the displayed results with the following options.

Interface - limit results to interfaces that contain the case sensitive search string e.g. "com.android" or "Sms".
Method - limit results to function names containing the specified case sensitive string.
Type - Limit results to certain types of messages e.g. requests or responses.
Once you've entered your filter options just press Enter to apply them.
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