I keep coming across iOS frameworks that I can’t connect back to a company. Some examples from today are these SDKs with RTLMX in the name like
- https://appgoblin.info/sdks/RLTMXProfiling.framework
- https://appgoblin.info/sdks/RLTMXProfilingConnections.framework
- https://appgoblin.info/sdks/RLTMXBehavioralBiometrics.framework
They all sound quite interesting, but unfortunately no Google / Bing results
Keeping track of the Known Unknowns?
I think it would be good to surface these somehow on appgoblin.
The current SDK page is pretty bad, as it is just the top “SDK” but since there are a lot of other junk in the Manifest/SmaliCode/Info.plist we get a pretty uninteresting set of top “SDKs” which are mostly NOT SDKs (ie permissions, version numbers 1.0, 6.0 etc) and build parts. This is already a paired down list, where I’ve tried taking out the most obvious junk, but that feels a bit like a long game of whackamole so I stopped.
I think it would be good to have a more robust set of data there, so let’s brainstorm the options:
- Devote a few hours to making the list of excluded items longer. There really are a LOT of stuff, like even when you scroll down to SDK #2000 it’s got lots of random build/stuff that is probably not related to an ‘SDK’ in the sense I want to track it mixed in. Still, probably just devoting a couple hours to filtering out the less interesting things would be a start. Another drawback: if later I realize that filtered out data was useful.
- Manually tag SDK items of interest. This works well for me since it’s what I do, digging through apps, I often find a handful of items that are interesting like the above. I currently keep a list of them in a note, but perhaps putting this on AppGoblin would be helpful?
- Blog about them: Maybe writing a specific blog for each one, putting it on appgoblin? Bring attention or have people point out what they are?
- Specifically filter for the items I think are interesting?
- Group android by the shortened SDK like xx.xx.xx? -> Not sure that would help too much?
- Filter iOS to only return .framework && .bundle -> Definitely useful, but I really feel like I’m missing some other important telltales for iOS.
I just wanted to put my thoughts down, so apologies for the short post. Hopefully this can percolate into a better idea. We’ll see which of these turns out to be best!