Reading data (embedded plist) linked to executable through -sectcreate __TEXT

otool

You can use otool(1) to dump the contents of the section containing the embedded plist:

otool -s __TEXT __info_plist /path/to/executable

and then pipe its output to xxd(1) in order to obtain the corresponding ASCII representation:

otool -X -s __TEXT __info_plist /path/to/executable | xxd -r

However, otool is only available in machines where Xcode has been installed.

NSBundle

For the cases where a program needs to read its own embedded plist, NSBundle can be used:

id someValue = [[NSBundle mainBundle] objectForInfoDictionaryKey:someKey];

Mach-O

For the cases where a program needs to read the embedded plist of an arbitrary file without resorting to otool, the program can parse the Mach-O information in the file and extract its embedded plist as follows:

#include <fcntl.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <mach-o/loader.h>
#include <sys/mman.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

id embeddedPlist(NSURL *executableURL) {
    id plist = nil;
    int fd;
    struct stat stat_buf;
    size_t size;

    char *addr = NULL;
    char *start_addr = NULL;
    struct mach_header_64 *mh = NULL;
    struct load_command *lc = NULL;
    struct segment_command_64 *sc = NULL;
    struct section_64 *sect = NULL;

    // Open the file and get its size
    fd = open([[executableURL path] UTF8String], O_RDONLY);
    if (fd == -1) goto END_FUNCTION;
    if (fstat(fd, &stat_buf) == -1) goto END_FILE;
    size = stat_buf.st_size;

    // Map the file to memory
    addr = start_addr = mmap(0, size, PROT_READ, MAP_FILE | MAP_PRIVATE, fd, 0);
    if (addr == MAP_FAILED) goto END_FILE;

    // The first bytes are the Mach-O header
    mh = (struct mach_header_64 *)addr;

    // Load commands follow the header
    addr += sizeof(struct mach_header_64);

    for (int icmd = 0; icmd < mh->ncmds; icmd++) {
        lc = (struct load_command *)addr;

        if (lc->cmd != LC_SEGMENT_64) {
            addr += lc->cmdsize;
            continue;
        }

        if (lc->cmdsize == 0) continue;

        // It's a 64-bit segment
        sc = (struct segment_command_64 *)addr;

        if (strcmp("__TEXT", sc->segname) != 0 || sc->nsects == 0) {
            addr += lc->cmdsize;
            continue;
        }

        // It's the __TEXT segment and it has at least one section
        // Section data follows segment data
        addr += sizeof(struct segment_command_64);
        for (int isect = 0; isect < sc->nsects; isect++) {
            sect = (struct section_64 *)addr;
            addr += sizeof(struct section_64);

            if (strcmp("__info_plist", sect->sectname) != 0) continue;

            // It's the __TEXT __info_plist section
            NSData *data = [NSData dataWithBytes:(start_addr + sect->offset)
                                          length:sect->size];
            plist = [NSPropertyListSerialization propertyListWithData:data
                                                              options:NSPropertyListImmutable
                                                               format:NULL
                                                                error:NULL];
            goto END_MMAP;
        }
    }

END_MMAP:
    munmap(addr, size);

END_FILE:
    close(fd);

END_FUNCTION:
    return plist;
}

and:

NSURL *url = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:@"/path/to/some/file"];
id plist = embeddedPlist(url);
if ([plist isKindOfClass:[NSDictionary class]]) {
    NSDictionary *info = plist;
    id someValue = [info objectForKey:someKey];
}

Note that embeddedPlist() has some limitations: it expects the file to be a thin Mach-O file (i.e., it will crash with non-Mach-O files and it won’t work with fat files containing, for example, both i386 and x86_64 Mach-O data); it only works with x86_64 files; it doesn’t report errors.

I went ahead and released BVPlistExtractor under the MIT licence. It detects whether the file is indeed a thin Mach-O file or a fat/universal file, and works with both i386 and x86_64.

User's computer would not probably have otool installed, and I had the same problem. The solution was to use launchctl, which is guaranteed to be present at any modern Mac.

It has a plist subcommand which does the following:

Prints the the property list embedded in the __TEXT,__info_plist segment/section
of the target Mach-O or the specified segment/section.

If you do not specify the section, it prints __TEXT by default. The only argument to provide is the path to the executable:

launchctl plist /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.sparklabs.ViscosityHelper

If you have given path, output might be something like this:

{
    "CFBundleIdentifier" = "com.sparklabs.ViscosityHelper";
    "SMAuthorizedClients" = (
        "anchor apple generic and identifier "com.viscosityvpn.Viscosity" and (certificate leaf[field.1.2.840.113635.100.6.1.9] /* exists */ or certificate 1[field.1.2.840.113635.100.6.2.6] /* exists */ and certificate leaf[field.1.2.840.113635.100.6.1.13] /* exists */ and certificate leaf[subject.OU] = "34XR7GXFPX")";
    );
    "CFBundleName" = "ViscosityHelper";
    "CFBundleVersion" = "548";
    "CFBundleInfoDictionaryVersion" = "6.0";
};

It can be used in command-line as well as from code via NSTask (Process in swift) class.

There's a CoreFoundation function for that: CFBundleCopyInfoDictionaryForURL(). From the documentation:

For a directory URL, this is equivalent to CFBundleCopyInfoDictionaryInDirectory. For a plain file URL representing an unbundled application, this function will attempt to read an information dictionary either from the (__TEXT, __info_plist) section of the file (for a Mach-O file) or from a plst resource.

It's available on Mac OS X v10.2 and later. If you use in Cocoa you can do this (provided you have an (NSURL*)url for the bundle):

NSDictionary* infoPlist = [ (NSDictionary*) CFBundleCopyInfoDictionaryForURL( (CFURLRef) url ) autorelease];