Re-implementation of the "ilnk" protocol used on some cheap (<$5) IP cameras (sometimes branded as 'X5' or 'A9').

• Bought here.
  • Waiting for this A9 camera to validate support.
• App is YsxLite

Per pictures the main chip is TXW817 (chinese, eng, google translate)

The interesting implementation is in libvdp.so, part of the apk bundle.

Protocol reversing was done with a combination of static analysis of the shared object with Ghidra and dynamic analysis with Frida.

The headers reversed with Ghidra are at types/all.h. They are almost not used by this minimal implementation though.

The hooks used with frida are at frida-hooks.js, but it's mostly a playground - some useful functions got deleted once I understood the protocol.

There's also a pretty crappy Wireshark dissector at dissector.lua. You can install it with make install-wireshark-dissector.

Running

To execute the server, run make run; JPEG files and audio.pcm will be created in a folder named captures.

There's no live-stream server built into this project yet.

Protocol

The protocol is weirdly complex, though very little communication is necessary to use the device

The base structure of a packet is:

The payload is command-dependent; most commands have only a literal payload, but the Drw (0xf1d0) command has a framing scheme:

By using the second byte in the payload as a discriminant, we can split the payload into two types of subcommands:

Control packets:

The payload on control packets is "encrypted" when the length is > 5.

Data packets:

Data packets further discriminate based on the first 4 bytes into: Audio Data (0x55aa15a8), Video data.

Session

To establish a session, a few control packets are sent.

---
title: Establish session
---

sequenceDiagram
	autonumber
    App->>+Cam: [C] LanSearch
    Cam->>-App: [C] PunchPkt (SerialNo)
    App->>+Cam: [C] P2PRdy
    Cam->>-App: [C] P2PRdy
    App->>+Cam: [C] ConnectUser
    Cam->>-App: [C] ConnectUserAck (Ticket)
   
   loop Every 400-500ms
        Cam-->>+App: [C] P2PAlive
        App-->>-Cam: [C] P2PAliveAck
    end

To start a stream, a single control packet is sent.

The received stream is broken up into 1028 byte payloads, along with a sequence number.

Stitching the payloads together yields JPEG frames for video, and 8KHz A-law PCM for audio.

---
title: Stream audio/video
---

sequenceDiagram
    App->>Cam: [C] StreamStart (with Ticket)
   
   loop
        Cam-->>+App: [D] Audio/Video Payload
        App-->>-Cam: [C] DrwAck
    end

Take APK from emulator/sacrificial device

adb shell pm list packages | grep ysx
adb shell pm path com.ysxlite.cam
adb shell pm path com.ysxlite.cam | while read -r line ; do adb pull $(echo $line | cut -d: -f2-) ;  done

Push to sacrificial device

adb install-multiple *apk

Frida install Android

docs