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Setting up a development environment

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Stan van Rooy edited this page Dec 3, 2020 · 1 revision

Setting up a development environment is relatively simple. The development environment is used for watching/intercepting HTTPS requests made by the Instagram app. With access to these requests, it is possible to mimic the behavior of the Instagram app exactly.

How we achieve this, is by connecting your phone to a proxy (i.e. mitmproxy), but out of the box, this won't work, because of SSL pinning built into the Instagram app. We can use an altered version of the app to bypass this. This will only work on Android phones.

Steps

  1. Install the Instagram app Download the APK from here. You can ignore the warning, from my testing all proxies work.
  2. Install a proxy I.e. mitmproxy, burp, fiddler.
  3. Setup the proxy on your phone Out of the box, most Android phones support proxies, but they will only be used for connections through the browser. Use an app like Postern, which pretends to be a VPN and thus is able to route all traffic through the proxy.

Once connected to the proxy, open the Instagram app and you should see the requests start flowing in.

If you get stuck somewhere, feel free to contact me. I'm happy to assist.

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