Protocol Prying: Systematic Vulnerability Research in the Apple AirDrop and Android Quick Share Proximity Transfer Protocols (opens in new tab)

Apple AirDrop and Google/Samsung Quick Share are proximity file-transfer protocols used by over five billion devices, yet their application-layer security properties remain largely unstudied because both stacks are proprietary and undocumented. Both protocols are reachable from wireless proximity without any prior pairing and process complex serialized content (binary plists, CPIO archives, Protocol Buffers, UKEY2 handshakes) inside privileged d...