Since https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1gdhy7u/experimental_flathub_release_of_newpipe_on_linux/ got a bit of traction yesterday, this is WhatsApp straight from Meta running on Linux desktop using android-translation-layer.
android-translation-layer (ATL) is a Wine-like approach to run Android applications on Linux. Rather than running an Android container like for example Waydroid does this instead implements the Android API. Note that right now it’s very much work in progress and almost no app will work yet, but the fact that they have apps like Newpipe and WhatsApp running already is very promising!
Join the Matrix chat at #android-translation-layer:matrix.org and follow along!
I hope this makes it easier to do TLS sniffing and security research on Android apps. A lot of developers seem to rely on no one simply looking at how much information is exposed in the APIs apps use. Currently because it’s much more difficult to sniff Android apps, a lot of privacy/security issues are not raised.
As long as it’s installed on a device you control it’s pretty easy to sniff TLS traffic from an Android application, even if they’re pinning certs. I do this all the time for work. Frida makes it extremely easy, even giving you the ability to edit boringssl if something important is happening in native code. I’ve had to do this a couple times.
If you don’t have root you’ll have to recompile the application though which could matter if you need the signature to not change, but that isn’t a common requirement.
It’d be nice to have a better way to test though; I’ve wanted to check out Waydroid. Some coworkers just use an emulator which works great if it doesn’t need specific hardware.
I’m curious, doesn’t WhatsApp require a phone number to be attached to an account? As in, I thought activating it doesn’t work on devices without a SIM card?
I haven’t used it in a while, but I think it just sends you an SMS with a code that you can enter manually, so yeah it works on devices without a SIM
…but it can’t run both in your phone and in your computer, right? For that you need the desktop app (which is Windows only) or the web app, which linux apps encapsulate right?
Should have been called AITL (AITL Is a Translation Layer)
I can feel it in the air. This is going to take off just like how wine and proton took off. We are going to go through another “Linux gaming” rush all over again and this shit is going to be fun. Let’s go!!!
Wine was first released in 1993. I hope our children are there to see the take off.
I don’t think you should compare the two progresses. Technology is much better now. So, things will definitely move much faster than they did back in the 90s.
There is slightly more openness to androids layers than the win32 layers as well.
I still remember symlinking to binaries in my windows system folder back in the late 90s to be able to run office 95 under Linux. (The MSFT system files permitted some things to work properly that just didn’t with the wine provided libraries back then)
Didn’t it take off in the late 90’s within Linux communities?
So I’d give this a few years, then.
Would anyone post a quick guide on how to run WhatsApp l using atl?
There is some documentation on https://gitlab.com/android_translation_layer/android_translation_layer/-/blob/master/README.md and I am rather sure it’s the right project, but some sort of installer would be nice. I think installing all those dependencies by hand is not a good solution in the long run. Wasn’t there supposed to be a flatpack container to be downloaded somewhere?
I think installing all those dependencies by hand is not a good solution in the long run.
Well, no. “In the long run” this gets packaged by distributions so you don’t have to compile anything. Right now it’s available for Alpine Linux and there is an AUR package for Arch.
Wasn’t there supposed to be a flatpack container to be downloaded somewhere?
There is a Flatpak (no c in that name!) base app available, and Newpipe has been packaged with that as a Flatpak, see https://flathub.org/apps/net.newpipe.NewPipe Ideally we get more stuff packaged up once more works but I don’t think it’s feasible to repackage everything out there so for a lot of applications you’ll just have to have a locally installed ATL outside of Flatpak.
