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Reverse Engineering Apple's typedstream Format


-exporter: Reverse Engineering Apple's typedstream Format typedstream Data imessage-exporter’s goal is to provide the most comprehensive representation of iMessage data available. Message data is stored in a legacy format that appears to be a stream that represents objects.

Through careful analysis of patterns, documentation fragments, and sample data, we've uncovered a format that efficiently encodes complex object hierarchies. The resulting implementation in imessage-exporter demonstrates how this legacy format can be deserialized, enabling platform-agnostic access to iMessage data that was previously locked within Apple’s ecosystem. This work not only enables practical applications like message export and analysis but also serves as a case study in reverse engineering binary formats through pattern recognition and hypothesis testing.

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