Itubes Library Format 2 Reversing the iTunes Library File Format

A few days ago I wrote some things about the iTunes library file format. Today I will try to write the remainder about this subject.

A small recap

In the previous post I discussed the structure of the encrypted file and there should also be enough information for a mediocre programmer to decrypt a .itl file by yourself. In this post I will be using a decrypted .itl file.

The base structure

Every .itl file starts with an hdfm information header. The approximate format of this header block is documented the older file format from iTunes v1.x - v3.x. Basically after this everything is the same as in the older file format, except the header ‘names’. The hdsm now is reversed to msdh. The whole file is basically build of msdh blocks with variable sizes.

Here is a small screenshot that shows the header and the msdh blocks:

Structure of the ‘msdh’ blocks

The msdh blocks contain the headerLength, totalLength and blockType as most important fields. After the msdh header, there is blockData that can contain various other types of structures. These structures very often look similar to this C-style structure:

typedef struct
{
    char signature[4]; //"mlrh" as signature identification.
    int headerLength; //total length of the header.
    char unknown[headerLength - 8]; //structure-specific data.
} mlrh;

A screenshot of how such a grammar looks:

Content of the ‘msdh’ blocks

The blockType field of the msdh block says something about the contents of the block. The value 4 for example has blockData that contains a path to the music library, /Users/xxxxxx/Music/iTunes/iTunes%20Media in my case. blockData can also contain other blocks. The miah and mith blocks for example both contain mhoh blocks. mhoh blocks are some kind of general-purpose block that can contain a lot of things.

Conclusion

The basic file format was all I needed to continue fixing requiem, so this it all for now. Maybe I will blog more about my progress later. You can find the grammar here, feel free to expand on it and don’t forget to send me the latest version if you do ;)

Merry Christmas,

mrexodia