| page.title=Security with HTTPS and SSL | |
| page.tags=network,certificates | |
| page.article=true | |
| @jd:body | |
| <div id="tb-wrapper"> | |
| <div id="tb"> | |
| <h2>In this document</h2> | |
| <ol class="nolist"> | |
| <li><a href="#Concepts">Concepts</a></li> | |
| <li><a href="#HttpsExample">An HTTP Example</a></li> | |
| <li><a href="#CommonProblems">Common Problems Verifying Server Certificates</a> | |
| <ol class="nolist"> | |
| <li><a href="#UnknownCa">Unknown certificate authority</a></li> | |
| <li><a href="#SelfSigned">Self-signed server certificate</a></li> | |
| <li><a href="#MissingCa">Missing intermediate certificate authority</a></li> | |
| </ol> | |
| </li> | |
| <li><a href="#CommonHostnameProbs">Common Problems with Hostname Verification</a></li> | |
| <li><a href="#WarningsSslSocket">Warnings About Using SSLSocket Directly</a></li> | |
| <li><a href="#Blacklisting">Blacklisting</a></li> | |
| <li><a href="#Pinning">Pinning</a></li> | |
| <li><a href="#ClientCert">Client Certificates</a></li> | |
| <li><a href="#nogotofail">Nogotofail: Network Security Testing</a></li> | |
| </ol> | |
| <h2>See also</h2> | |
| <ul> | |
| <li><a href="http://source.android.com/tech/security/index.html">Android | |
| Security Overview</a></li> | |
| <li><a href="{@docRoot}guide/topics/security/permissions.html">Permissions</a></li> | |
| </ul> | |
| </div></div> | |
| <p>The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)—now technically known as <a | |
| href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security">Transport Layer Security | |
| (TLS)</a>—is a | |
| common building block for encrypted communications between clients and servers. It's possible that | |
| an application might use SSL incorrectly such that malicious entities may | |
| be able to intercept an app's data over the network. To help you ensure that this does not happen | |
| to your app, this article highlights the common pitfalls when using secure network protocols and addresses some larger concerns about using <a | |
| href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_infrastructure">Public-Key Infrastructure (PKI)</a>. | |
| <h2 id="Concepts">Concepts</h2> | |
| <p>In a typical SSL usage scenario, a server is configured with a certificate containing a | |
| public key as well as a matching private key. As part of the handshake between an SSL client | |
| and server, the server proves it has the private key by signing its certificate with <a | |
| href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography">public-key cryptography</a>.</p> | |
| <p>However, anyone can generate their own certificate and private key, so a simple handshake | |
| doesn't prove anything about the server other than that the server knows the private key that | |
| matches the public key of the certificate. One way to solve this problem is to have the client | |
| have a set of one or more certificates it trusts. If the certificate is not in the set, the | |
| server is not to be trusted.</p> | |
| <p>There are several downsides to this simple approach. Servers should be able to | |
| upgrade to stronger keys over time ("key rotation"), which replaces the public key in the | |
| certificate with a new one. Unfortunately, now the client app has to be updated due to what | |
| is essentially a server configuration change. This is especially problematic if the server | |
| is not under the app developer's control, for example if it is a third party web service. This | |
| approach also has issues if the app has to talk to arbitrary servers such as a web browser or | |
| email app.</p> | |
| <p>In order to address these downsides, servers are typically configured with certificates | |
| from well known issuers called <a | |
| href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_authority">Certificate Authorities (CAs)</a>. | |
| The host platform generally contains a list of well known CAs that it trusts. | |
| As of Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean), Android currently contains over 100 CAs that are updated | |
| in each release. Similar to a server, a CA has a certificate and a private key. When issuing | |
| a certificate for a server, the CA <a | |
| href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signature">signs</a> | |
| the server certificate using its private key. The | |
| client can then verify that the server has a certificate issued by a CA known to the platform.</p> | |
| <p>However, while solving some problems, using CAs introduces another. Because the CA issues | |
| certificates for many servers, you still need some way to make sure you are talking to the | |
| server you want. To address this, the certificate issued by the CA identifies the server | |
| either with a specific name such as <em>gmail.com</em> or a wildcarded set of | |
| hosts such as <em>*.google.com</em>. </p> | |
| <p>The following example will make these concepts a little more concrete. In the snippet below | |
| from a command line, the <a href="http://www.openssl.org/docs/apps/openssl.html">{@code openssl}</a> | |
| tool's {@code s_client} command looks at Wikipedia's server certificate information. It | |
| specifies port 443 because that is the default for <acronym title="Hypertext Transfer | |
| Protocol Secure">HTTPS</acronym>. The command sends | |
| the output of {@code openssl s_client} to {@code openssl x509}, which formats information | |
| about certificates according to the <a | |
| href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.509">X.509 standard</a>. Specifically, | |
| the command asks for the subject, which contains the server name information, | |
| and the issuer, which identifies the CA.</p> | |
| <pre class="no-pretty-print"> | |
| $ openssl s_client -connect wikipedia.org:443 | openssl x509 -noout -subject -issuer | |
| <b>subject=</b> /serialNumber=sOrr2rKpMVP70Z6E9BT5reY008SJEdYv/C=US/O=*.wikipedia.org/OU=GT03314600/OU=See www.rapidssl.com/resources/cps (c)11/OU=Domain Control Validated - RapidSSL(R)/<b>CN=*.wikipedia.org</b> | |
| <b>issuer=</b> /C=US/O=GeoTrust, Inc./CN=<b>RapidSSL CA</b> | |
| </pre> | |
| <p>You can see that the certificate was issued for servers matching <em>*.wikipedia.org</em> by | |
| the RapidSSL CA.</p> | |
| <h2 id="HttpsExample">An HTTPS Example</h2> | |
| <p>Assuming you have a web server with a | |
| certificate issued by a well known CA, you can make a secure request with code as | |
| simple this:</p> | |
| <pre> | |
| URL url = new URL("https://wikipedia.org"); | |
| URLConnection urlConnection = url.openConnection(); | |
| InputStream in = urlConnection.getInputStream(); | |
| copyInputStreamToOutputStream(in, System.out); | |
| </pre> | |
| <p>Yes, it really can be that simple. If you want to tailor the HTTP request, you can cast to | |
| an {@link java.net.HttpURLConnection}. The Android documentation for | |
| {@link java.net.HttpURLConnection} has further examples about how to deal with request | |
| and response headers, posting content, managing cookies, using proxies, caching responses, | |
| and so on. But in terms of the details for verifying certificates and hostnames, the Android | |
| framework takes care of it for you through these APIs. | |
| This is where you want to be if at all possible. That said, below are some other considerations.</p> | |
| <h2 id="CommonProblems">Common Problems Verifying Server Certificates</h2> | |
| <p>Suppose instead of receiving the content from {@link java.net.URLConnection#getInputStream | |
| getInputStream()}, it throws an exception:</p> | |
| <pre class="no-pretty-print"> | |
| javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: java.security.cert.CertPathValidatorException: Trust anchor for certification path not found. | |
| at org.apache.harmony.xnet.provider.jsse.OpenSSLSocketImpl.startHandshake(OpenSSLSocketImpl.java:374) | |
| at libcore.net.http.HttpConnection.setupSecureSocket(HttpConnection.java:209) | |
| at libcore.net.http.HttpsURLConnectionImpl$HttpsEngine.makeSslConnection(HttpsURLConnectionImpl.java:478) | |
| at libcore.net.http.HttpsURLConnectionImpl$HttpsEngine.connect(HttpsURLConnectionImpl.java:433) | |
| at libcore.net.http.HttpEngine.sendSocketRequest(HttpEngine.java:290) | |
| at libcore.net.http.HttpEngine.sendRequest(HttpEngine.java:240) | |
| at libcore.net.http.HttpURLConnectionImpl.getResponse(HttpURLConnectionImpl.java:282) | |
| at libcore.net.http.HttpURLConnectionImpl.getInputStream(HttpURLConnectionImpl.java:177) | |
| at libcore.net.http.HttpsURLConnectionImpl.getInputStream(HttpsURLConnectionImpl.java:271) | |
| </pre> | |
| <p>This can happen for several reasons, including: | |
| <ol> | |
| <li><a href="#UnknownCa">The CA that issued the server certificate was unknown</a></li> | |
| <li><a href="#SelfSigned">The server certificate wasn't signed by a CA, but was self signed</a></li> | |
| <li><a href="#MissingCa">The server configuration is missing an intermediate CA</a></li> | |
| </ol> | |
| <p>The following sections discuss how to address these problems while keeping your | |
| connection to the server secure. | |
| <h3 id="UnknownCa">Unknown certificate authority</h3> | |
| <p>In this case, the {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException} occurs | |
| because you have a CA that isn't trusted by the system. It could be because | |
| you have a certificate from a new CA that isn't yet trusted by Android or your app is | |
| running on an older version without the CA. More often a CA is unknown because it isn't a | |
| public CA, but a private one issued by an organization such as a government, corporation, | |
| or education institution for their own use.</p> | |
| <p>Fortunately, you can teach {@link javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection} | |
| to trust a specific set of CAs. The procedure | |
| can be a little convoluted, so below is an example that takes a specific CA from | |
| an {@link java.io.InputStream}, uses it to create a {@link java.security.KeyStore}, | |
| which is then used to create and initialize a | |
| {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager}. A {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager} is what the system | |
| uses to validate certificates from the server | |
| and—by creating one from a {@link java.security.KeyStore} with one or more CAs—those | |
| will be the only CAs trusted by that {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager}.</p> | |
| <p>Given the new {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager}, | |
| the example initializes a new {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLContext} which provides | |
| an {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory} you can use to override the default | |
| {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory} from | |
| {@link javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection}. This way the | |
| connection will use your CAs for certificate validation.</p> | |
| <p>Here is the example in | |
| full using an organizational CA from the University of Washington:</p> | |
| <pre> | |
| // Load CAs from an InputStream | |
| // (could be from a resource or ByteArrayInputStream or ...) | |
| CertificateFactory cf = CertificateFactory.getInstance("X.509"); | |
| // From https://www.washington.edu/itconnect/security/ca/load-der.crt | |
| InputStream caInput = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream("load-der.crt")); | |
| Certificate ca; | |
| try { | |
| ca = cf.generateCertificate(caInput); | |
| System.out.println("ca=" + ((X509Certificate) ca).getSubjectDN()); | |
| } finally { | |
| caInput.close(); | |
| } | |
| // Create a KeyStore containing our trusted CAs | |
| String keyStoreType = KeyStore.getDefaultType(); | |
| KeyStore keyStore = KeyStore.getInstance(keyStoreType); | |
| keyStore.load(null, null); | |
| keyStore.setCertificateEntry("ca", ca); | |
| // Create a TrustManager that trusts the CAs in our KeyStore | |
| String tmfAlgorithm = TrustManagerFactory.getDefaultAlgorithm(); | |
| TrustManagerFactory tmf = TrustManagerFactory.getInstance(tmfAlgorithm); | |
| tmf.init(keyStore); | |
| // Create an SSLContext that uses our TrustManager | |
| SSLContext context = SSLContext.getInstance("TLS"); | |
| context.init(null, tmf.getTrustManagers(), null); | |
| // Tell the URLConnection to use a SocketFactory from our SSLContext | |
| URL url = new URL("https://certs.cac.washington.edu/CAtest/"); | |
| HttpsURLConnection urlConnection = | |
| (HttpsURLConnection)url.openConnection(); | |
| urlConnection.setSSLSocketFactory(context.getSocketFactory()); | |
| InputStream in = urlConnection.getInputStream(); | |
| copyInputStreamToOutputStream(in, System.out); | |
| </pre> | |
| <p>With a custom {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager} that knows about your CAs, | |
| the system is able to validate | |
| that your server certificate come from a trusted issuer.</p> | |
| <p class="caution"><strong>Caution:</strong> | |
| Many web sites describe a poor alternative solution which is to install a | |
| {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager} that does nothing. If you do this you might as well not | |
| be encrypting your communication, because anyone can attack your users at a public Wi-Fi hotspot | |
| by using <acronym title="Domain Name System">DNS</acronym> tricks to send your users' | |
| traffic through a proxy of their own that pretends to be your server. The attacker can then | |
| record passwords and other personal data. This works because the attacker can generate a | |
| certificate and—without a {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager} that actually | |
| validates that the certificate comes from a trusted | |
| source—your app could be talking to anyone. So don't do this, not even temporarily. You can | |
| always make your app trust the issuer of the server's certificate, so just do it.</p> | |
| <h3 id="SelfSigned">Self-signed server certificate</h3> | |
| <p>The second case of {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException} is | |
| due to a self-signed certificate, which means the server is behaving as its own CA. | |
| This is similar to an unknown certificate authority, so you can use the | |
| same approach from the previous section.</p> | |
| <p>You can create your own {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager}, | |
| this time trusting the server certificate directly. This has all of the | |
| downsides discussed earlier of tying your app directly to a certificate, but can be done | |
| securely. However, you should be careful to make sure your self-signed certificate has a | |
| reasonably strong key. As of 2012, a 2048-bit RSA signature with an exponent of 65537 expiring | |
| yearly is acceptable. When rotating keys, you should check for <a | |
| href="http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/key_mgmt/index.html">recommendations</a> from an | |
| authority (such as <a href="http://www.nist.gov/">NIST</a>) about what is acceptable.</p> | |
| <h3 id="MissingCa">Missing intermediate certificate authority</h3> | |
| <p>The third case of {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException} | |
| occurs due to a missing intermediate CA. Most public | |
| CAs don't sign server certificates directly. Instead, they use their main CA certificate, | |
| referred to as the root CA, to sign intermediate CAs. They do this so the root CA can be stored | |
| offline to reduce risk of compromise. However, operating systems like Android typically | |
| trust only root CAs directly, which leaves a short gap of trust between the server | |
| certificate—signed by the intermediate CA—and the certificate verifier, | |
| which knows the root CA. To solve | |
| this, the server doesn't send the client only it's certificate during the SSL handshake, but | |
| a chain of certificates from the server CA through any intermediates necessary to reach a | |
| trusted root CA.</p> | |
| <p>To see what this looks like in practice, here's the <em>mail.google.com</em> certificate | |
| chain as viewed by the <a href="http://www.openssl.org/docs/apps/openssl.html">{@code openssl}</a> | |
| {@code s_client} command:</p> | |
| <pre class="no-pretty-print"> | |
| $ openssl s_client -connect mail.google.com:443 | |
| --- | |
| Certificate chain | |
| 0 s:/C=US/ST=California/L=Mountain View/O=Google Inc/CN=mail.google.com | |
| i:/C=ZA/O=Thawte Consulting (Pty) Ltd./CN=Thawte SGC CA | |
| 1 s:/C=ZA/O=Thawte Consulting (Pty) Ltd./CN=Thawte SGC CA | |
| i:/C=US/O=VeriSign, Inc./OU=Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority | |
| --- | |
| </pre> | |
| <p>This shows that the server sends a certificate for <em>mail.google.com</em> | |
| issued by the <em>Thawte SGC</em> CA, which is an intermediate CA, and a second certificate | |
| for the <em>Thawte SGC</em> CA issued by a <em>Verisign</em> CA, which is the primary CA that's | |
| trusted by Android.</p> | |
| <p>However, it is not uncommon to configure a server to not include the necessary | |
| intermediate CA. For example, here is a server that can cause an error in Android browsers and | |
| exceptions in Android apps:</p> | |
| <pre class="no-pretty-print"> | |
| $ openssl s_client -connect egov.uscis.gov:443 | |
| --- | |
| Certificate chain | |
| 0 s:/C=US/ST=District Of Columbia/L=Washington/O=U.S. Department of Homeland Security/OU=United States Citizenship and Immigration Services/OU=Terms of use at www.verisign.com/rpa (c)05/CN=egov.uscis.gov | |
| i:/C=US/O=VeriSign, Inc./OU=VeriSign Trust Network/OU=Terms of use at https://www.verisign.com/rpa (c)10/CN=VeriSign Class 3 International Server CA - G3 | |
| --- | |
| </pre> | |
| <p>What is interesting to note here is that visiting this server in most desktop browsers | |
| does not cause an error like a completely unknown CA or self-signed server certificate would | |
| cause. This is because most desktop browsers cache trusted intermediate CAs over time. Once | |
| a browser has visited and learned about an intermediate CA from one site, it won't | |
| need to have the intermediate CA included in the certificate chain the next time.</p> | |
| <p>Some sites do this intentionally for secondary web servers used to serve resources. For | |
| example, they might have their main HTML page served by a server with a full certificate | |
| chain, but have servers for resources such as images, CSS, or JavaScript not include the | |
| CA, presumably to save bandwidth. Unfortunately, sometimes these servers might be providing | |
| a web service you are trying to call from your Android app, which is not as forgiving.</p> | |
| <p>There are two approaches to solve this issue:</p> | |
| <ul> | |
| <li>Configure the server to | |
| include the intermediate CA in the server chain. Most CAs provide documentation on how to do | |
| this for all common web servers. This is the only approach if you need the site to work with | |
| default Android browsers at least through Android 4.2.</li> | |
| <li>Or, treat the | |
| intermediate CA like any other unknown CA, and create a {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager} | |
| to trust it directly, as done in the previous two sections.</li> | |
| </ul> | |
| <h2 id="CommonHostnameProbs">Common Problems with Hostname Verification</h2> | |
| <p>As mentioned at the beginning of this article, | |
| there are two key parts to verifying an SSL connection. The first | |
| is to verify the certificate is from a trusted source, which was the focus of the previous | |
| section. The focus of this section is the second part: making sure the server you are | |
| talking to presents the right certificate. When it doesn't, you'll typically see an error | |
| like this:</p> | |
| <pre class="no-pretty-print"> | |
| java.io.IOException: Hostname 'example.com' was not verified | |
| at libcore.net.http.HttpConnection.verifySecureSocketHostname(HttpConnection.java:223) | |
| at libcore.net.http.HttpsURLConnectionImpl$HttpsEngine.connect(HttpsURLConnectionImpl.java:446) | |
| at libcore.net.http.HttpEngine.sendSocketRequest(HttpEngine.java:290) | |
| at libcore.net.http.HttpEngine.sendRequest(HttpEngine.java:240) | |
| at libcore.net.http.HttpURLConnectionImpl.getResponse(HttpURLConnectionImpl.java:282) | |
| at libcore.net.http.HttpURLConnectionImpl.getInputStream(HttpURLConnectionImpl.java:177) | |
| at libcore.net.http.HttpsURLConnectionImpl.getInputStream(HttpsURLConnectionImpl.java:271) | |
| </pre> | |
| <p>One reason this can happen is due to a server configuration error. The server is | |
| configured with a certificate that does not have a subject or subject alternative name fields | |
| that match the server you are trying to reach. It is possible to have one certificate be used | |
| with many different servers. For example, looking at the <em>google.com</em> certificate with | |
| <a href="http://www.openssl.org/docs/apps/openssl.html">{@code openssl}</a> {@code | |
| s_client -connect google.com:443 | openssl x509 -text} you can see that a subject | |
| that supports <em>*.google.com</em> but also subject alternative names for <em>*.youtube.com</em>, | |
| <em>*.android.com</em>, and others. The error occurs only when the server name you | |
| are connecting to isn't listed by the certificate as acceptable.</p> | |
| <p>Unfortunately this can happen for another reason as well: <a | |
| href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_hosting">virtual hosting</a>. When sharing a | |
| server for more than one hostname with HTTP, the web server can tell from the HTTP/1.1 request | |
| which target hostname the client is looking for. Unfortunately this is complicated with | |
| HTTPS, because the server has to know which certificate to return before it sees the HTTP | |
| request. To address this problem, newer versions of SSL, specifically TLSv.1.0 and later, | |
| support <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication">Server Name Indication | |
| (SNI)</a>, which allows the SSL client to specify the intended | |
| hostname to the server so the proper certificate can be returned.</p> | |
| <p>Fortunately, {@link javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection} supports | |
| SNI since Android 2.3. One workaround | |
| if you need to support Android 2.2 (and older) is to set up an alternative | |
| virtual host on a unique port so that it's unambiguous which server certificate to return.</p> | |
| <p>The more drastic alternative is to replace {@link javax.net.ssl.HostnameVerifier} | |
| with one that uses not the | |
| hostname of your virtual host, but the one returned by the server by default.</p> | |
| <p class="caution"><strong>Caution:</strong> Replacing {@link javax.net.ssl.HostnameVerifier} | |
| can be <strong>very dangerous</strong> if the other virtual host is | |
| not under your control, because a man-in-the-middle attack could direct traffic to another | |
| server without your knowledge.</p> | |
| <p>If you are still sure you want to override hostname verification, here is an example | |
| that replaces the verifier for a single {@link java.net.URLConnection} | |
| with one that still verifies that the hostname is at least on expected by the app:</p> | |
| <pre> | |
| // Create an HostnameVerifier that hardwires the expected hostname. | |
| // Note that is different than the URL's hostname: | |
| // example.com versus example.org | |
| HostnameVerifier hostnameVerifier = new HostnameVerifier() { | |
| @Override | |
| public boolean verify(String hostname, SSLSession session) { | |
| HostnameVerifier hv = | |
| HttpsURLConnection.getDefaultHostnameVerifier(); | |
| return hv.verify("example.com", session); | |
| } | |
| }; | |
| // Tell the URLConnection to use our HostnameVerifier | |
| URL url = new URL("https://example.org/"); | |
| HttpsURLConnection urlConnection = | |
| (HttpsURLConnection)url.openConnection(); | |
| urlConnection.setHostnameVerifier(hostnameVerifier); | |
| InputStream in = urlConnection.getInputStream(); | |
| copyInputStreamToOutputStream(in, System.out); | |
| </pre> | |
| <p>But remember, if you find yourself replacing hostname verification, especially | |
| due to virtual hosting, it's still <strong>very dangerous</strong> if the other virtual host is | |
| not under your control and you should find an alternative hosting arrangement | |
| that avoids this issue.</p> | |
| <h2 id="WarningsSslSocket">Warnings About Using SSLSocket Directly</h2> | |
| <p>So far, the examples have focused on HTTPS using {@link javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection}. | |
| Sometimes apps need to use SSL separate from HTTP. For example, an email app might use SSL variants | |
| of SMTP, POP3, or IMAP. In those cases, the app would want to use {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLSocket} | |
| directly, much the same way that {@link javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection} does internally.</p> | |
| <p>The techniques described so | |
| far to deal with certificate verification issues also apply to {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLSocket}. | |
| In fact, when using a custom {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager}, what is passed to | |
| {@link javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection} is an {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory}. | |
| So if you need to use a custom {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager} with an | |
| {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLSocket}, follow | |
| the same steps and use that {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory} to create your | |
| {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLSocket}.</p> | |
| <p class="caution"><strong>Caution:</strong> | |
| {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLSocket} <strong>does not</strong> perform hostname verification. It is | |
| up the your app to do its own hostname verification, preferably by calling {@link | |
| javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection#getDefaultHostnameVerifier()} with the expected hostname. Further | |
| beware that {@link javax.net.ssl.HostnameVerifier#verify HostnameVerifier.verify()} | |
| doesn't throw an exception on error but instead returns a boolean result that you must | |
| explicitly check.</p> | |
| <p>Here is an example showing how you can do this. It shows that when connecting to | |
| <em>gmail.com</em> port 443 without SNI support, you'll receive a certificate for | |
| <em>mail.google.com</em>. This is expected in this case, so check to make sure that | |
| the certificate is indeed for <em>mail.google.com</em>:</p> | |
| <pre> | |
| // Open SSLSocket directly to gmail.com | |
| SocketFactory sf = SSLSocketFactory.getDefault(); | |
| SSLSocket socket = (SSLSocket) sf.createSocket("gmail.com", 443); | |
| HostnameVerifier hv = HttpsURLConnection.getDefaultHostnameVerifier(); | |
| SSLSession s = socket.getSession(); | |
| // Verify that the certicate hostname is for mail.google.com | |
| // This is due to lack of SNI support in the current SSLSocket. | |
| if (!hv.verify("mail.google.com", s)) { | |
| throw new SSLHandshakeException("Expected mail.google.com, " | |
| "found " + s.getPeerPrincipal()); | |
| } | |
| // At this point SSLSocket performed certificate verificaiton and | |
| // we have performed hostname verification, so it is safe to proceed. | |
| // ... use socket ... | |
| socket.close(); | |
| </pre> | |
| <h2 id="Blacklisting">Blacklisting</h2> | |
| <p>SSL relies heavily on CAs to issue certificates to only the properly verified owners | |
| of servers and domains. In rare cases, CAs are either tricked or, in the case of <a | |
| href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comodo_Group#Breach_of_security">Comodo</a> or <a | |
| href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiNotar">DigiNotar</a>, breached, | |
| resulting in the certificates for a hostname to be issued to | |
| someone other than the owner of the server or domain.</p> | |
| <p>In order to mitigate this risk, Android has the ability to blacklist certain certificates or even | |
| whole CAs. While this list was historically built into the operating system, starting in | |
| Android 4.2 this list can be remotely updated to deal with future compromises.</p> | |
| <h2 id="Pinning">Pinning</h2> | |
| <p>An app can further protect itself from fraudulently issued certificates by a | |
| technique known as pinning. This is basically using the example provided in the unknown CA case | |
| above to restrict an app's trusted CAs to a small set known to be used by the app's servers. This | |
| prevents the compromise of one of the other 100+ CAs in the system from resulting in a breach of | |
| the apps secure channel.</p> | |
| <h2 id="ClientCert">Client Certificates</h2> | |
| <p>This article has focused on the user of SSL to secure communications with servers. SSL also | |
| supports the notion of client certificates that allow the server to validate the identity of a | |
| client. While beyond the scope of this article, the techniques involved are similar to specifying | |
| a custom {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager}. | |
| See the discussion about creating a custom {@link javax.net.ssl.KeyManager} in the documentation for | |
| {@link javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection}.</p> | |
| <h2 id="nogotofail"> | |
| Nogotofail: A Network Traffic Security Testing Tool | |
| </h2> | |
| <p> | |
| Nogotofail is a tool gives you an easy way to confirm that your apps are safe | |
| against known TLS/SSL vulnerabilities and misconfigurations. It's an | |
| automated, powerful, and scalable tool for testing network security issues on | |
| any device whose network traffic could be made to go through it. </p> | |
| <p>Nogotofail is useful for three main use cases: | |
| </p> | |
| <ul> | |
| <li>Finding bugs and vulnerabilities. | |
| </li> | |
| <li>Verifying fixes and watching for regressions. | |
| </li> | |
| <li>Understanding what applications and devices are generating what traffic. | |
| </li> | |
| </ul> | |
| <p> | |
| Nogotofail works for Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, Chrome OS, OSX, in fact | |
| any device you use to connect to the Internet. There’s an easy-to-use client | |
| to configure the settings and get notifications on Android and Linux, as well | |
| as the attack engine itself which can be deployed as a router, VPN server, or | |
| proxy. | |
| </p> | |
| <p> | |
| You can access the tool at the <a href= | |
| "https://github.com/google/nogotofail">Nogotofail open source project</a>. | |
| </p> | |