nska-deserialize 1.3.2

Convert NSKeyedArchiver plist into a deserialized human readable plist

NSKeyedArchive plist deserializer

Deserializes NSKeyedArchiver created plists, which are frequent in macOS/iOS. These are serialized versions of plists (or data classes) and are meant for machine reading. The deserialized version is human readable for analysts and investigators who need to review the data.

The library recursively deserializes the entire plist and returns a dictionary/list object representing the entire plist. Certain NSKeyedArchiver plists contain circular references, which results in infinite looping. The code detects and breaks these loops wherever found to return useable data.

Requirements: Python 3.6+ (3.8 recommended)

Due to improvements in the built-in plistlib library in Python 3.8, it is recommended to use 3.8 or above. For 3.7 or lower, it should work fine for most plists, some might fail to save correctly. If you don't care about saving the deserialized plist (using the built-in library functions), then this should make no difference.

Installation (via pip/pip3)

pip3 install nska_deserialize

Usage

From a file

import nska_deserialize as nd

input_path = '/Users/yogesh/Desktop/sample.sfl2'

with open(input_path, 'rb') as f:
    try:
        deserialized_plist = nd.deserialize_plist(f)
        print(deserialized_plist)
    except (nd.DeserializeError, 
            nd.biplist.NotBinaryPlistException, 
            nd.biplist.InvalidPlistException,
            plistlib.InvalidFileException,
            nd.ccl_bplist.BplistError, 
            ValueError, 
            TypeError, OSError, OverflowError) as ex:
        # These are all possible errors from libraries imported

        print('Had exception: ' + str(ex))
        deserialized_plist = None

    if deserialized_plist:
        output_path_plist = input_path + '_deserialized.plist'
        output_path_json  = input_path + '_deserialized.json'

        nd.write_plist_to_json_file(deserialized_plist, output_path_json)
        nd.write_plist_to_file(deserialized_plist, output_path_plist)

From a String

import nska_deserialize as nd

plist_in_string = b"{notional string that might have come from a database}"

try:
    deserialized_plist = nd.deserialize_plist_from_string(plist_in_string)
    print(deserialized_plist)
except (nd.DeserializeError, 
        nd.biplist.NotBinaryPlistException, 
        nd.biplist.InvalidPlistException,
        plistlib.InvalidFileException,
        nd.ccl_bplist.BplistError, 
        ValueError, 
        TypeError, OSError, OverflowError) as ex:
    # These are all possible errors from libraries imported

    print('Had exception: ' + str(ex))
    deserialized_plist = None

if deserialized_plist:
    output_path_plist = input_path + '_deserialized.plist'
    output_path_json  = input_path + '_deserialized.json'

    nd.write_plist_to_json_file(deserialized_plist, output_path_json)
    nd.write_plist_to_file(deserialized_plist, output_path_plist)

Change log

v1.3.2
Version 1.3.2 adds NSUUID type to ccl_bplist, which should remove at least some exceptions related to unhashable type: 'NsKeyedArchiverDictionary'

v1.3.1
Version 1.3.1 is python 3.9 compatible (earlier versions of library may have problems with XML plists on python 3.9)

v1.2
Support for macOS Big Sur plists, some have hexadecimal integers in XML, which caused problems with underlying plist parsers