I can see this being nice for scenarios similar to ssh's StrictHostKeyChecking option where DNS or other infrastructure may not be trusted, and for internal enterprise networks that use self-signed certs as long as they put the cert (or the cert's sha1 as you propose) in the app at build time.
It's improved security that would be purely optional, and quite easy to set up. +1 https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Certificate_and_Public_Key_Pinning On Jan 12, 2014, at 6:21 AM, Tommy-Carlos Williams <to...@devgeeks.org> wrote: > TL;DR: I am proposing to add certificate pinning at least to iOS and Android, > and help on any implementations for other platforms in any way I can. > > (Longer version) > > There is an existing issue for certificate pinning [1] from back in May of > 2013 and it's something that I need for all of our apps and even any I might > make for myself in the future. > > The last year or two have seen a pretty serious rise in both actual exploits > and awareness around the topic of security. There was an article tweeted > around recently about someone auditing mobile bank apps and found that "40% > of the audited apps did not validate the authenticity of SSL certificates > presented. This makes them susceptible to Man in The Middle (MiTM) attacks" > [2]. > > If certificate pinning is something good, and we can make it easy to > implement, surely that would be a good thing? The whitelist is all well and > good, but most people are probably leaving the default "*" and even if they > didn't, it wouldn't protect them from MitM attacks. > > There *is* an existing plugin that attempts to do this for Cordova / PhoneGap > [3][4], but it has a pretty massive and fairly obvious flaw. It simply checks > the certificate then reports back in its callback. At first this might seem > OK, but as someone pointed out in an issue [5], an attacker "could wait until > the server is validated before adding the MITM server, circumventing the > security check". I am no security expert, so if I could think of a way to get > around this, then it's not very secure. > > What I am proposing, is adding certificate pinning to Cordova itself so that > the *actual* requests are checked (much like the whitelist). Not some initial > request, or having to try and do two requests for every request (still > leaving open the hole I spoke of above). > > I am looking for buy-in from the list, but I am also interested in discussion > on the best way to do it (and test it). > > My initial proposal is to use SHA1 fingerprints (much like Eddy's plugin > above [6]) as opposed to trying to get devs to embed an entire cert file in > their app. The easier it is to use the more likely people are to use it. If > they can get the fingerprint from any site they want to safely access by > simply using Chrome/Safari/etc, or a basic cli command, that would be best. I > envisage devs being able to even pin the certs for third party services like > Parse etc. > > A simple config.xml directive with key/value pairs of any hosts/fingerprints > should be all a dev needs to use this feature. > > - tommy > > > > 1. https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CB-3498 > 2. > http://blog.ioactive.com/2014/01/personal-banking-apps-leak-info-through.html > 3. > http://www.x-services.nl/certificate-pinning-plugin-for-phonegap-to-prevent-man-in-the-middle-attacks/734 > 4. https://github.com/EddyVerbruggen/SSLCertificateChecker-PhoneGap-Plugin > 5. > https://github.com/EddyVerbruggen/SSLCertificateChecker-PhoneGap-Plugin/issues/5 > 6. > https://github.com/EddyVerbruggen/SSLCertificateChecker-PhoneGap-Plugin#3-usage
