Frida Dynamic Instrumentation.

An open-source dynamic instrumentation toolkit by Ole André Vadla Ravnås that lets researchers hook, trace, and rewrite functions inside running processes on Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux — the de facto tool for mobile app reverse engineering and bypass research. It belongs to the Mobile Security category of cybersecurity.

An open-source dynamic instrumentation toolkit by Ole André Vadla Ravnås that lets researchers hook, trace, and rewrite functions inside running processes on Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux — the de facto tool for mobile app reverse engineering and bypass research.

Frida is an open-source dynamic instrumentation toolkit created by Ole André Vadla Ravnås around 2013. It injects a JavaScript runtime into a target process and exposes APIs to enumerate modules and exports, hook native and managed functions, read and write memory, intercept and modify arguments and return values, trace syscalls, and call functions interactively. On Android, Frida is the standard tool for hooking Java methods via the ART runtime and native methods via Linker hooks; on iOS it hooks Objective-C selectors and Swift methods. Mobile-security workflows use Frida to bypass TLS pinning, root/jailbreak detection, anti-tamper guards, and emulator detection; to dump in-memory secrets and keystore-protected keys; to fuzz cryptographic functions; and to characterize unknown protocols. The companion projects (Objection, brida, frida-tools, House) provide ready-made scripts and IDA/Ghidra integration. Frida is also abused as malware tooling on jailbroken devices, but its primary use is by AppSec teams, mobile pen-testers, and researchers in audited environments.

Defences for Frida Dynamic Instrumentation typically combine technical controls and operational practices, as detailed in the full definition above.

Common alternative names include: Frida, frida-server, frida-gadget.