Forward a remote iOS device, locally.

README.md

fwd_ios.sh

Forwards a remote iOS device, exposed via usbmuxd on Linux to a local macOS client.
The inverse (aka ssh -R) is left as an excercise to the reader, but shouldn't be too hard :)

This is basically a simple usbfluxd that only depends on socat.

install

Copy the bash script to a local file, say fwd_ios.sh and make it executable with chmod +x fwd_ios.sh.

Then, run it and specify the remote host that has the physical iOS device you want connected. Example:

leons-Mac:~ root# ./fwd_ios.sh leon@172.16.182.172
[+] moving real usbmuxd socket out of the way
[+] configuring ssh tunnel to leon@172.16.182.172
leon@172.16.182.172's password:
[+] ssh tunnel PID is 914
[+] connecting remote socket to local socket. ^C to quit and revert

To end the session, hit ^C.

^C[+] killing ssh tunnel with PID 914
[+] restoring real usbmuxd socket
[+] removing dangling remote socket

fwd_ios.sh

#!/bin/bash

# forward a remote usbmuxd socket locally.
# useful to make remote iOS devices available to cloud macOS instances
#
# 2022 @leonjza

set -e

# arg 1 being the target. eg: leon@remote
SSH_TARGET=$1

if [ -z $SSH_TARGET ]
then
	echo "[+] usage: $0 ssh_target (eg: $0 user@host)"
	exit 1
fi

REAL_SOCKET=/var/run/usbmuxd
BACKUP_SOCKET=/var/run/usbmuxd.orig
REMOTE_SOCKET=/var/run/usbmuxd.remote

SSH_TUNNEL_PID=""

# handle ^C && errors
trap cleanup INT
trap cleanup ERR

function cleanup() {

	if [ ! -z $SSH_TUNNEL_PID ]
	then
		echo "[+] killing ssh tunnel with PID $SSH_TUNNEL_PID"
		kill -15 $SSH_TUNNEL_PID 
	fi

	echo "[+] restoring real usbmuxd socket"
	mv $BACKUP_SOCKET $REAL_SOCKET
	echo "[+] removing dangling remote socket"
	rm -f $REMOTE_SOCKET

	exit
}

echo "[+] moving real usbmuxd socket out of the way"
mv $REAL_SOCKET $BACKUP_SOCKET

echo "[+] configuring ssh tunnel to $SSH_TARGET"
ssh -C -L $REMOTE_SOCKET:$REAL_SOCKET $SSH_TARGET -N -f
SSH_TUNNEL_PID=$(pgrep ssh | tail -n 1)
echo "[+] ssh tunnel PID is $SSH_TUNNEL_PID"

echo "[+] connecting remote socket to local socket. ^C to quit and revert"
socat UNIX-LISTEN:$REAL_SOCKET,mode=777,reuseaddr,fork UNIX-CONNECT:$REMOTE_SOCKET