objective c - Is it possible to reverse-engineer my iPhone application?

Question

I have created an iPhone application, and I want to send the compiled .app file to my client, so he can install and test this iPhone application on his device.

Is it possible that he can view the contents of this .app file, like the resource files used in this application (images, sound files, etc.)? Could he reverse engineer the source code used to build this application from the compiled product?

Answer 1

On OSX an Application Bundle is just a directory named .app with some special meta-data files about the application, and the application executables and its resources. Right clicking and picking Show Package Contents will show the entire contents of the Application.app directory.

Any file resources, images, sounds, properties filed, etc. that are not using some application specific encryption will be plainly accesible.

That said, the application code, if a native Objective-C application, will be compiled and not easily reverse engineered, it would have to be decompiled, and if stripped of debugging information would take a dedicated hacker to grok the assembly output and modify it.