To use the smsDBQuery.py, copy it to your device’s /var/mobile/Library/SMS/ directory and run it as follows: SELECT text from message where read=0 order by date desc SmsDBQuery.py smsDBQuery.py uses the standard SQLite API to connect to the sms.db and fetch all the unread messages using the below query: With a potential idea of where SMS messages might be stored, I decided to use Python’s sqlite API to query the database directly.

Everything looked fine, so I ran through the file looking for CREATE statements to determine where messages were stored which produced the following structure:ĬREATE TABLE message (ROWID INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT, With all of the utilities having problems reading the file, I decided to just open the file using a text editor to determine if there was something wrong with it. We also tried to read the database file from within iOS using the sqlite3 binary that came with Cydia which proved to be futile: I also tried SQLite Database Browser which resulted in the below error. For whatever reason many of the sqlite3 utilities seem to have problems opening the file.Īlthough the initial import worked using sqlite3.exe on Windows, attempts to query the sms.db file failed. All three files are read with a single connect() function call from the sqlite API.įirst task at hand is to read sms.db file and analyze the database to find out how iOS is storing SMS messages. sms.db-wal uses a different format on top of the standard sqlite structure as the sms.db.

The last received SMS message will go into sms.db-wal file. Sms.db is the main file that retains most data, however these files are temporary in nature. The sms.db-wal is a 'Write Ahead Log' which is responsible for transactional behavior, while the sms.db-shm is an 'Associate File' which is required to read sms.db-wal and the original sms.db.

SMS messages are stored in the following files: IOS stores a lot of data in sqlite databases which, in most cases, can be identified by their “.db” extension.

iOS 5.1.1 (9B206) - Other versions may work as well.

There are ways to do this using a few Cydia Apps but they usually require you to register for an account or pay for the service which was less than ideal for me. This blog post shows one of the many ways to read SMS messages from a jailbroken iPhone and send it as an email. As with most ideas, this one also took shape out of necessity to reduce manual work and dependencies in various scenarios.

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