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      1 page.title=Security with HTTPS and SSL
      2 page.tags="network","certificates"
      3 
      4 page.article=true
      5 @jd:body
      6 
      7 <div id="tb-wrapper">
      8 <div id="tb">
      9 <h2>In this document</h2>
     10 <ol class="nolist">
     11   <li><a href="#Concepts">Concepts</a></li>
     12   <li><a href="#HttpsExample">An HTTP Example</a></li>
     13   <li><a href="#CommonProblems">Common Problems Verifying Server Certificates</a>
     14     <ol class="nolist">
     15       <li><a href="#UnknownCa">Unknown certificate authority</a></li>
     16       <li><a href="#SelfSigned">Self-signed server certificate</a></li>
     17       <li><a href="#MissingCa">Missing intermediate certificate authority</a></li>
     18     </ol>
     19   </li>
     20   <li><a href="#CommonHostnameProbs">Common Problems with Hostname Verification</a></li>
     21   <li><a href="#WarningsSslSocket">Warnings About Using SSLSocket Directly</a></li>
     22   <li><a href="#Blacklisting">Blacklisting</a></li>
     23   <li><a href="#Pinning">Pinning</a></li>
     24   <li><a href="#ClientCert">Client Certificates</a></li>
     25 </ol>
     26 
     27 
     28 <h2>See also</h2>
     29 <ul>
     30 <li><a href="http://source.android.com/tech/security/index.html">Android
     31 Security Overview</a></li>
     32 <li><a href="{@docRoot}guide/topics/security/permissions.html">Permissions</a></li>
     33 </ul>
     34 </div></div>
     35 
     36 
     37 
     38 <p>The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)&mdash;now technically known as <a
     39 href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security">Transport Layer Security
     40 (TLS)</a>&mdash;is a
     41 common building block for encrypted communications between clients and servers. It's possible that
     42 an application might use SSL incorrectly such that malicious entities may
     43 be able to intercept an app's data over the network. To help you ensure that this does not happen
     44 to your app, this article highlights the common pitfalls when using secure network protocols and addresses some larger concerns about using <a
     45 href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_infrastructure">Public-Key Infrastructure (PKI)</a>.
     46 
     47 
     48 <h2 id="Concepts">Concepts</h2>
     49 
     50 <p>In a typical SSL usage scenario, a server is configured with a certificate containing a
     51 public key as well as a matching private key. As part of the handshake between an SSL client
     52 and server, the server proves it has the private key by signing its certificate with <a
     53 href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography">public-key cryptography</a>.</p>
     54 
     55 <p>However, anyone can generate their own certificate and private key, so a simple handshake
     56 doesn't prove anything about the server other than that the server knows the private key that
     57 matches the public key of the certificate. One way to solve this problem is to have the client
     58 have a set of one or more certificates it trusts. If the certificate is not in the set, the
     59 server is not to be trusted.</p>
     60 
     61 <p>There are several downsides to this simple approach. Servers should be able to
     62 upgrade to stronger keys over time ("key rotation"), which replaces the public key in the
     63 certificate with a new one. Unfortunately, now the client app has to be updated due to what
     64 is essentially a server configuration change. This is especially problematic if the server
     65 is not under the app developer's control, for example if it is a third party web service. This
     66 approach also has issues if the app has to talk to arbitrary servers such as a web browser or
     67 email app.</p>
     68 
     69 <p>In order to address these downsides, servers are typically configured with certificates
     70 from well known issuers called <a
     71 href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_authority">Certificate Authorities (CAs)</a>.
     72 The host platform generally contains a list of well known CAs that it trusts.
     73 As of Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean), Android currently contains over 100 CAs that are updated
     74 in each release. Similar to a server, a CA has a certificate and a private key. When issuing
     75 a certificate for a server, the CA <a
     76 href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signature">signs</a>
     77 the server certificate using its private key. The
     78 client can then verify that the server has a certificate issued by a CA known to the platform.</p>
     79 
     80 <p>However, while solving some problems, using CAs introduces another. Because the CA issues
     81 certificates for many servers, you still need some way to make sure you are talking to the
     82 server you want. To address this, the certificate issued by the CA identifies the server
     83 either with a specific name such as <em>gmail.com</em> or a wildcarded set of
     84 hosts such as <em>*.google.com</em>. </p>
     85 
     86 <p>The following example will make these concepts a little more concrete. In the snippet below
     87 from a command line, the <a href="http://www.openssl.org/docs/apps/openssl.html">{@code openssl}</a>
     88 tool's {@code s_client} command looks at Wikipedia's server certificate information. It
     89 specifies port 443 because that is the default for <acronym title="Hypertext Transfer
     90 Protocol Secure">HTTPS</acronym>. The command sends
     91 the output of {@code openssl s_client} to {@code openssl x509}, which formats information
     92 about certificates according to the <a
     93 href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.509">X.509 standard</a>. Specifically,
     94 the command asks for the subject, which contains the server name information,
     95 and the issuer, which identifies the CA.</p>
     96 
     97 <pre class="no-pretty-print">
     98 $ openssl s_client -connect wikipedia.org:443 | openssl x509 -noout -subject -issuer
     99 <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>
    100 <b>issuer=</b> /C=US/O=GeoTrust, Inc./CN=<b>RapidSSL CA</b>
    101 </pre>
    102 
    103 <p>You can see that the certificate was issued for servers matching <em>*.wikipedia.org</em> by
    104 the RapidSSL CA.</p>
    105 
    106 
    107 
    108 <h2 id="HttpsExample">An HTTPS Example</h2>
    109 
    110 <p>Assuming you have a web server with a
    111 certificate issued by a well known CA, you can make a secure request with code as
    112 simple this:</p>
    113 
    114 <pre>
    115 URL url = new URL("https://wikipedia.org");
    116 URLConnection urlConnection = url.openConnection();
    117 InputStream in = urlConnection.getInputStream();
    118 copyInputStreamToOutputStream(in, System.out);
    119 </pre>
    120 
    121 <p>Yes, it really can be that simple. If you want to tailor the HTTP request, you can cast to
    122 an {@link java.net.HttpURLConnection}. The Android documentation for
    123 {@link java.net.HttpURLConnection} has further examples about how to deal with request
    124 and response headers, posting content, managing cookies, using proxies, caching responses,
    125 and so on. But in terms of the details for verifying certificates and hostnames, the Android
    126 framework takes care of it for you through these APIs.
    127 This is where you want to be if at all possible. That said, below are some other considerations.</p>
    128 
    129 
    130 
    131 <h2 id="CommonProblems">Common Problems Verifying Server Certificates</h2>
    132 
    133 <p>Suppose instead of receiving the content from {@link java.net.URLConnection#getInputStream
    134 getInputStream()}, it throws an exception:</p>
    135 
    136 <pre class="no-pretty-print">
    137 javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: java.security.cert.CertPathValidatorException: Trust anchor for certification path not found.
    138         at org.apache.harmony.xnet.provider.jsse.OpenSSLSocketImpl.startHandshake(OpenSSLSocketImpl.java:374)
    139         at libcore.net.http.HttpConnection.setupSecureSocket(HttpConnection.java:209)
    140         at libcore.net.http.HttpsURLConnectionImpl$HttpsEngine.makeSslConnection(HttpsURLConnectionImpl.java:478)
    141         at libcore.net.http.HttpsURLConnectionImpl$HttpsEngine.connect(HttpsURLConnectionImpl.java:433)
    142         at libcore.net.http.HttpEngine.sendSocketRequest(HttpEngine.java:290)
    143         at libcore.net.http.HttpEngine.sendRequest(HttpEngine.java:240)
    144         at libcore.net.http.HttpURLConnectionImpl.getResponse(HttpURLConnectionImpl.java:282)
    145         at libcore.net.http.HttpURLConnectionImpl.getInputStream(HttpURLConnectionImpl.java:177)
    146         at libcore.net.http.HttpsURLConnectionImpl.getInputStream(HttpsURLConnectionImpl.java:271)
    147 </pre>
    148 
    149 <p>This can happen for several reasons, including:
    150 <ol>
    151   <li><a href="#UnknownCa">The CA that issued the server certificate was unknown</a></li>
    152   <li><a href="#SelfSigned">The server certificate wasn't signed by a CA, but was self signed</a></li>
    153   <li><a href="#MissingCa">The server configuration is missing an intermediate CA</a></li>
    154 </ol>
    155 
    156 <p>The following sections discuss how to address these problems while keeping your
    157 connection to the server secure.
    158 
    159 
    160 
    161 <h3 id="UnknownCa">Unknown certificate authority</h3>
    162 
    163 <p>In this case, the {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException} occurs
    164 because you have a CA that isn't trusted by the system. It could be because
    165 you have a certificate from a new CA that isn't yet trusted by Android or your app is
    166 running on an older version without the CA. More often a CA is unknown because it isn't a
    167 public CA, but a private one issued by an organization such as a government, corporation,
    168 or education institution for their own use.</p>
    169 
    170 <p>Fortunately, you can teach {@link javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection}
    171 to trust a specific set of CAs. The procedure
    172 can be a little convoluted, so below is an example that takes a specific CA from
    173 an {@link java.io.InputStream}, uses it to create a {@link java.security.KeyStore},
    174 which is then used to create and initialize a
    175 {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager}. A {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager} is what the system
    176 uses to validate certificates from the server
    177 and&mdash;by creating one from a {@link java.security.KeyStore} with one or more CAs&mdash;those
    178 will be the only CAs trusted by that {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager}.</p>
    179 
    180 <p>Given the new {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager},
    181 the example initializes a new {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLContext} which provides
    182 an {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory} you can use to override the default
    183 {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory} from
    184 {@link javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection}. This way the
    185 connection will use your CAs for certificate validation.</p>
    186 
    187 <p>Here is the example in
    188 full using an organizational CA from the University of Washington:</p>
    189 
    190 <pre>
    191 // Load CAs from an InputStream
    192 // (could be from a resource or ByteArrayInputStream or ...)
    193 CertificateFactory cf = CertificateFactory.getInstance("X.509");
    194 // From https://www.washington.edu/itconnect/security/ca/load-der.crt
    195 InputStream caInput = new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream("load-der.crt"));
    196 Certificate ca;
    197 try {
    198     ca = cf.generateCertificate(caInput);
    199     System.out.println("ca=" + ((X509Certificate) ca).getSubjectDN());
    200 } finally {
    201     caInput.close();
    202 }
    203 
    204 // Create a KeyStore containing our trusted CAs
    205 String keyStoreType = KeyStore.getDefaultType();
    206 KeyStore keyStore = KeyStore.getInstance(keyStoreType);
    207 keyStore.load(null, null);
    208 keyStore.setCertificateEntry("ca", ca);
    209 
    210 // Create a TrustManager that trusts the CAs in our KeyStore
    211 String tmfAlgorithm = TrustManagerFactory.getDefaultAlgorithm();
    212 TrustManagerFactory tmf = TrustManagerFactory.getInstance(tmfAlgorithm);
    213 tmf.init(keyStore);
    214 
    215 // Create an SSLContext that uses our TrustManager
    216 SSLContext context = SSLContext.getInstance("TLS");
    217 context.init(null, tmf.getTrustManagers(), null);
    218 
    219 // Tell the URLConnection to use a SocketFactory from our SSLContext
    220 URL url = new URL("https://certs.cac.washington.edu/CAtest/");
    221 HttpsURLConnection urlConnection =
    222     (HttpsURLConnection)url.openConnection();
    223 urlConnection.setSSLSocketFactory(context.getSocketFactory());
    224 InputStream in = urlConnection.getInputStream();
    225 copyInputStreamToOutputStream(in, System.out);
    226 </pre>
    227 
    228 <p>With a custom {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager} that knows about your CAs,
    229 the system is able to validate
    230 that your server certificate come from a trusted issuer.</p>
    231 
    232 <p class="caution"><strong>Caution:</strong>
    233 Many web sites describe a poor alternative solution which is to install a
    234 {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager} that does nothing. If you do this you might as well not
    235 be encrypting your communication, because anyone can attack your users at a public Wi-Fi hotspot
    236 by using <acronym title="Domain Name System">DNS</acronym> tricks to send your users'
    237 traffic through a proxy of their own that pretends to be your server. The attacker can then
    238 record passwords and other personal data. This works because the attacker can generate a
    239 certificate and&mdash;without a {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager} that actually
    240 validates that the certificate comes from a trusted
    241 source&mdash;your app could be talking to anyone. So don't do this, not even temporarily. You can
    242 always make your app trust the issuer of the server's certificate, so just do it.</p>
    243 
    244 
    245 
    246 <h3 id="SelfSigned">Self-signed server certificate</h3>
    247 
    248 <p>The second case of {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException} is
    249 due to a self-signed certificate, which means the server is behaving as its own CA.
    250 This is similar to an unknown certificate authority, so you can use the
    251 same approach from the previous section.</p>
    252 
    253 <p>You can create yout own {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager},
    254 this time trusting the server certificate directly. This has all of the
    255 downsides discussed earlier of tying your app directly to a certificate, but can be done
    256 securely. However, you should be careful to make sure your self-signed certificate has a
    257 reasonably strong key. As of 2012, a 2048-bit RSA signature with an exponent of 65537 expiring
    258 yearly is acceptable. When rotating keys, you should check for <a
    259 href="http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/key_mgmt/index.html">recommendations</a> from an
    260 authority (such as <a href="http://www.nist.gov/">NIST</a>) about what is acceptable.</p>
    261 
    262 
    263 
    264 <h3 id="MissingCa">Missing intermediate certificate authority</h3>
    265 
    266 <p>The third case of {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException}
    267 occurs due to a missing intermediate CA. Most public
    268 CAs don't sign server certificates directly. Instead, they use their main CA certificate,
    269 referred to as the root CA, to sign intermediate CAs. They do this so the root CA can be stored
    270 offline to reduce risk of compromise. However, operating systems like Android typically
    271 trust only root CAs directly, which leaves a short gap of trust between the server
    272 certificate&mdash;signed by the intermediate CA&mdash;and the certificate verifier,
    273 which knows the root CA. To solve
    274 this, the server doesn't send the client only it's certificate during the SSL handshake, but
    275 a chain of certificates from the server CA through any intermediates necessary to reach a
    276 trusted root CA.</p>
    277 
    278 <p>To see what this looks like in practice, here's the <em>mail.google.com</em> certificate
    279 chain as viewed by the <a href="http://www.openssl.org/docs/apps/openssl.html">{@code openssl}</a>
    280 {@code s_client} command:</p>
    281 
    282 <pre class="no-pretty-print">
    283 $ openssl s_client -connect mail.google.com:443
    284 ---
    285 Certificate chain
    286  0 s:/C=US/ST=California/L=Mountain View/O=Google Inc/CN=mail.google.com
    287    i:/C=ZA/O=Thawte Consulting (Pty) Ltd./CN=Thawte SGC CA
    288  1 s:/C=ZA/O=Thawte Consulting (Pty) Ltd./CN=Thawte SGC CA
    289    i:/C=US/O=VeriSign, Inc./OU=Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority
    290 ---
    291 </pre>
    292 
    293 
    294 <p>This shows that the server sends a certificate for <em>mail.google.com</em>
    295 issued by the <em>Thawte SGC</em> CA, which is an intermediate CA, and a second certificate
    296 for the <em>Thawte SGC</em> CA issued by a <em>Verisign</em> CA, which is the primary CA that's
    297 trusted by Android.</p>
    298 
    299 <p>However, it is not uncommon to configure a server to not include the necessary
    300 intermediate CA. For example, here is a server that can cause an error in Android browsers and
    301 exceptions in Android apps:</p>
    302 
    303 <pre class="no-pretty-print">
    304 $ openssl s_client -connect egov.uscis.gov:443
    305 ---
    306 Certificate chain
    307  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
    308    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
    309 ---
    310 </pre>
    311 
    312 <p>What is interesting to note here is that visiting this server in most desktop browsers
    313 does not cause an error like a completely unknown CA or self-signed server certificate would
    314 cause. This is because most desktop browsers cache trusted intermediate CAs over time. Once
    315 a browser has visited and learned about an intermediate CA from one site, it won't
    316 need to have the intermediate CA included in the certificate chain the next time.</p>
    317 
    318 <p>Some sites do this intentionally for secondary web servers used to serve resources. For
    319 example, they might have their main HTML page served by a server with a full certificate
    320 chain, but have servers for resources such as images, CSS, or JavaScript not include the
    321 CA, presumably to save bandwidth. Unfortunately, sometimes these servers might be providing
    322 a web service you are trying to call from your Android app, which is not as forgiving.</p>
    323 
    324 <p>There are two approaches to solve this issue:</p>
    325 <ul>
    326   <li>Configure the server to
    327   include the intermediate CA in the server chain. Most CAs provide documentation on how to do
    328   this for all common web servers. This is the only approach if you need the site to work with
    329   default Android browsers at least through Android 4.2.</li>
    330   <li>Or, treat the
    331   intermediate CA like any other unknown CA, and create a {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager}
    332   to trust it directly, as done in the previous two sections.</li>
    333 </ul>
    334 
    335 
    336 <h2 id="CommonHostnameProbs">Common Problems with Hostname Verification</h2>
    337 
    338 <p>As mentioned at the beginning of this article,
    339 there are two key parts to verifying an SSL connection. The first
    340 is to verify the certificate is from a trusted source, which was the focus of the previous
    341 section. The focus of this section is the second part: making sure the server you are
    342 talking to presents the right certificate. When it doesn't, you'll typically see an error
    343 like this:</p>
    344 
    345 <pre class="no-pretty-print">
    346 java.io.IOException: Hostname 'example.com' was not verified
    347         at libcore.net.http.HttpConnection.verifySecureSocketHostname(HttpConnection.java:223)
    348         at libcore.net.http.HttpsURLConnectionImpl$HttpsEngine.connect(HttpsURLConnectionImpl.java:446)
    349         at libcore.net.http.HttpEngine.sendSocketRequest(HttpEngine.java:290)
    350         at libcore.net.http.HttpEngine.sendRequest(HttpEngine.java:240)
    351         at libcore.net.http.HttpURLConnectionImpl.getResponse(HttpURLConnectionImpl.java:282)
    352         at libcore.net.http.HttpURLConnectionImpl.getInputStream(HttpURLConnectionImpl.java:177)
    353         at libcore.net.http.HttpsURLConnectionImpl.getInputStream(HttpsURLConnectionImpl.java:271)
    354 </pre>
    355 
    356 
    357 <p>One reason this can happen is due to a server configuration error. The server is
    358 configured with a certificate that does not have a subject or subject alternative name fields
    359 that match the server you are trying to reach. It is possible to have one certificate be used
    360 with many different servers. For example, looking at the <em>google.com</em> certificate with
    361 <a href="http://www.openssl.org/docs/apps/openssl.html">{@code openssl}</a> {@code
    362 s_client -connect google.com:443 | openssl x509 -text} you can see that a subject
    363 that supports <em>*.google.com</em> but also subject alternative names for <em>*.youtube.com</em>,
    364 <em>*.android.com</em>, and others. The error occurs only when the server name you
    365 are connecting to isn't listed by the certificate as acceptable.</p>
    366 
    367 <p>Unfortunately this can happen for another reason as well: <a
    368 href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_hosting">virtual hosting</a>. When sharing a
    369 server for more than one hostname with HTTP, the web server can tell from the HTTP/1.1 request
    370 which target hostname the client is looking for. Unfortunately this is complicated with
    371 HTTPS, because the server has to know which certificate to return before it sees the HTTP
    372 request. To address this problem, newer versions of SSL, specifically TLSv.1.0 and later,
    373 support <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication">Server Name Indication
    374 (SNI)</a>, which allows the SSL client to specify the intended
    375 hostname to the server so the proper certificate can be returned.</p>
    376 
    377 <p>Fortunately, {@link javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection} supports
    378 SNI since Android 2.3. Unfortunately, Apache
    379 HTTP Client does not, which is one of the many reasons we discourage its use. One workaround
    380 if you need to support Android 2.2 (and older) or Apache HTTP Client is to set up an alternative
    381 virtual host on a unique port so that it's unambiguous which server certificate to return.</p>
    382 
    383 <p>The more drastic alternative is to replace {@link javax.net.ssl.HostnameVerifier}
    384 with one that uses not the
    385 hostname of your virtual host, but the one returned by the server by default.</p>
    386 
    387 <p class="caution"><strong>Caution:</strong> Replacing {@link javax.net.ssl.HostnameVerifier}
    388 can be <strong>very dangerous</strong> if the other virtual host is
    389 not under your control, because a man-in-the-middle attack could direct traffic to another
    390 server without your knowledge.</p>
    391 
    392 <p>If you are still sure you want to override hostname verification, here is an example
    393 that replaces the verifier for a single {@link java.net.URLConnection}
    394 with one that still verifies that the hostname is at least on expected by the app:</p>
    395 
    396 <pre>
    397 // Create an HostnameVerifier that hardwires the expected hostname.
    398 // Note that is different than the URL's hostname:
    399 // example.com versus example.org
    400 HostnameVerifier hostnameVerifier = new HostnameVerifier() {
    401     &#64;Override
    402     public boolean verify(String hostname, SSLSession session) {
    403         HostnameVerifier hv =
    404             HttpsURLConnection.getDefaultHostnameVerifier();
    405         return hv.verify("example.com", session);
    406     }
    407 };
    408 
    409 // Tell the URLConnection to use our HostnameVerifier
    410 URL url = new URL("https://example.org/");
    411 HttpsURLConnection urlConnection =
    412     (HttpsURLConnection)url.openConnection();
    413 urlConnection.setHostnameVerifier(hostnameVerifier);
    414 InputStream in = urlConnection.getInputStream();
    415 copyInputStreamToOutputStream(in, System.out);
    416 </pre>
    417 
    418 <p>But remember, if you find yourself replacing hostname verification, especially
    419 due to virtual hosting, it's still <strong>very dangerous</strong> if the other virtual host is
    420 not under your control and you should find an alternative hosting arrangement
    421 that avoids this issue.</p>
    422 
    423 
    424 
    425 
    426 <h2 id="WarningsSslSocket">Warnings About Using SSLSocket Directly</h2>
    427 
    428 <p>So far, the examples have focused on HTTPS using {@link javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection}.
    429 Sometimes apps need to use SSL separate from HTTP. For example, an email app might use SSL variants
    430 of SMTP, POP3, or IMAP. In those cases, the app would want to use {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLSocket}
    431 directly, much the same way that {@link javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection} does internally.</p>
    432 
    433 <p>The techniques described so
    434 far to deal with certificate verification issues also apply to {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLSocket}.
    435 In fact, when using a custom {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager}, what is passed to
    436 {@link javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection} is an {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory}.
    437 So if you need to use a custom {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager} with an
    438 {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLSocket}, follow
    439 the same steps and use that {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory} to create your
    440 {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLSocket}.</p>
    441 
    442 <p class="caution"><strong>Caution:</strong>
    443 {@link javax.net.ssl.SSLSocket} <strong>does not</strong> perform hostname verification. It is
    444 up the your app to do its own hostname verification, preferably by calling {@link
    445 javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection#getDefaultHostnameVerifier()} with the expected hostname. Further
    446 beware that {@link javax.net.ssl.HostnameVerifier#verify HostnameVerifier.verify()}
    447 doesn't throw an exception on error but instead returns a boolean result that you must
    448 explicitly check.</p>
    449 
    450 <p>Here is an example showing how you can do this. It shows that when connecting to
    451 <em>gmail.com</em> port 443 without SNI support, you'll receive a certificate for
    452 <em>mail.google.com</em>. This is expected in this case, so check to make sure that
    453 the certificate is indeed for <em>mail.google.com</em>:</p>
    454 
    455 <pre>
    456 // Open SSLSocket directly to gmail.com
    457 SocketFactory sf = SSLSocketFactory.getDefault();
    458 SSLSocket socket = (SSLSocket) sf.createSocket("gmail.com", 443);
    459 HostnameVerifier hv = HttpsURLConnection.getDefaultHostnameVerifier();
    460 SSLSession s = socket.getSession();
    461 
    462 // Verify that the certicate hostname is for mail.google.com
    463 // This is due to lack of SNI support in the current SSLSocket.
    464 if (!hv.verify("mail.google.com", s)) {
    465     throw new SSLHandshakeException("Expected mail.google.com, "
    466                                     "found " + s.getPeerPrincipal());
    467 }
    468 
    469 // At this point SSLSocket performed certificate verificaiton and
    470 // we have performed hostname verification, so it is safe to proceed.
    471 
    472 // ... use socket ...
    473 socket.close();
    474 </pre>
    475 
    476 
    477 
    478 <h2 id="Blacklisting">Blacklisting</h2>
    479 
    480 <p>SSL relies heavily on CAs to issue certificates to only the properly verified owners
    481 of servers and domains. In rare cases, CAs are either tricked or, in the case of <a
    482 href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comodo_Group#Breach_of_security">Comodo</a> or <a
    483 href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiNotar">DigiNotar</a>, breached,
    484 resulting in the certificates for a hostname to be issued to
    485 someone other than the owner of the server or domain.</p>
    486 
    487 <p>In order to mitigate this risk, Android has the ability to blacklist certain certificates or even
    488 whole CAs. While this list was historically built into the operating system, starting in
    489 Android 4.2 this list can be remotely updated to deal with future compromises.</p>
    490 
    491 
    492 
    493 <h2 id="Pinning">Pinning</h2>
    494 
    495 <p>An app can further protect itself from fraudulently issued certificates by a
    496 technique known as pinning. This is basically using the example provided in the unknown CA case
    497 above to restrict an app's trusted CAs to a small set known to be used by the app's servers. This
    498 prevents the compromise of one of the other 100+ CAs in the system from resulting in a breach of
    499 the apps secure channel.</p>
    500 
    501 
    502 
    503 <h2 id="ClientCert">Client Certificates</h2>
    504 
    505 <p>This article has focused on the user of SSL to secure communications with servers. SSL also
    506 supports the notion of client certificates that allow the server to validate the identity of a
    507 client. While beyond the scope of this article, the techniques involved are similar to specifying
    508 a custom {@link javax.net.ssl.TrustManager}.
    509 See the discussion about creating a custom {@link javax.net.ssl.KeyManager} in the documentation for
    510 {@link javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection}.</p>
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