How we reverse-engineered Google Maps pagination

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  • pbtk

    A toolset for reverse engineering and fuzzing Protobuf-based apps

    In this story, you'll see the process of decoding URL parameters for pagination on Google Maps. It involved deobfuscation of Closure-compiled JavaScript, reverse-engineering of Protobuf data structures, and a bit of math. We tried to decode URL parameters by ourselves, by using pbtk, and attempted to outsource this work. In the end, we succeeded after several pair programming sessions.

  • InfluxDB

    Purpose built for real-time analytics at any scale. InfluxDB Platform is powered by columnar analytics, optimized for cost-efficient storage, and built with open data standards.

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  • protobuf

    Protocol Buffers for JavaScript & TypeScript.

    Google Maps URLs contain the pb parameter contains string-encoded Protobuf. The format is the same as for the data parameter in the browser URL on Google Maps. It contains !-separated values. There are several answers on StackOverflow, gists on GitHub, some blog posts about decoding, and even a kinda official guide on reverse engineering protobuf, but none of this touches pagination.

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