I am trying to add one of our root cert in the trusted store of the iOS. I am just curious if this is possible to do at the compile time? I have seen different versions of people creating p12, but genuinely I just want to add it to the trusted store, so the server can recognize during the SSL handshake that this is a trusted domain.
Thanks
no you cant add it as a trusted root - not at compile time or runtime either
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I have some difficulties to understand the difference between code signing and PKI.
Is it possible to use a PKI (with a hierarchy of CA) to issue certificate used to sign code source, and then use the revocation to invalid some software (for instance an old version that should not be used) ? Or are X.509 certificate incompatible with code signing and i'm missing something ?
Thanks your very much.
The PKI is an infrastructure that allows you to issue certificates with which you sign your binaries (among other things). You don't sign the source code.
You can create a separate certificate for every software release you have, however, I didn't see anybody use it this way and for that purpose.
Usually you enroll a few certificates and use them to sign all releases until they expire.
Even if a certificate does expire, it won't prevent from the customer keep using your software.
I gather that most developers (except perhaps for larger companies) use self-signed certificates to sign their apk. Since this is required for app installation, the ability to sign your app is available to anyone. Fairly simple to use keytool and jarsigner from Java SDK. However these self-signed certs and associated private keys do NOT guarantee any degree of security unless you can somehow match that certificate with someone you actually trust. There is no ability to revocate these self-signed certificates (no CRL) and there is no "issuer" (since the certs are almost always self-signed) who "vouches" in some way for the identity of the certificate/key holder who signs the code.
So does Andriod platform have or plan to have any ability to prevent installation of apps SIGNED WITH A PARTICULAR SIGNATURE? or to enable settings only allowing installation of apps signed by a cert/key issued by a list of trusted CA (certificate-authorities/issuers) ?
However, there is some security available: In settings/Security you can prevent installation of anything (even signed and manually copied to your SIM) unless it comes from the Play Store, the default setting. Also you might be able to install a User certificate and ONLY allow apps signed by that cert to install (even if from the Play Store?).
I dont think the purpose of these certificates is to ensure an identity as a normal certificate signed by a CA would. As it seems to me the purpose of the certificates is just to have an extra security factor to ensure that the person that published the app for the first time is the one that publishes updates.
Without this someone that hacks your google account would be able to publish malicious updates to you entire user base.
So I would say its basically a two-factor authentication for publishing.
On certain sites the certificate chain can not be built up to the trusted root certificate because this trusted root cert is not known to Windows. But if we visit such site using IE or Chrome, Windows automatically downloads (verified) the trusted root somewhere and silently installs it to Trusted Certificate Authorities storage. After this we can build the certificate chain up to the newly installed root. If we manually remove newly downloaded trusted root certificate from Windows storage, the chain can't be built again.
I know about Authority Information Access extension. The problem is that the topmost available certificate in the chain (the child of missing trusted root) does NOT have such extension included. And even if it had, Windows would not automatically trust the downloaded certificate.
So there must be some other source of knowledge about trusted roots. The question is - how can we use that source ourselves. The topmost available certificate is available here if anyone is interested in inspecting it.
This link http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931125 explains how Windows updates root certificates silently in Vista and 7.
I also stumbled on this multiple times. It can be reproduced easily using windows sandbox. If you use curl or similar certificates can not be verified. Only if you call WinHttpOpen the root certificate (if trusted) will be added to the root certificate store.
See this post
Certificates contain an extension called "Authority Information Access" which contains the details of the issuing CA. An example of the certificate used for "https://gooogle.com" is shown below. The browser reads this value, downloads the certificate from the URL provided and repeats the process up the certificate chain.
I'm working on an Eclipse-based product and am currently facing an issue when installing plugins on it. Despite the certificates being issued by VeriSign (and the plugins being properly signed with the certificate on export), when installing the "Do you trust these certificates?" window still pops up.
Now, the question is, is this the expected behavior? I was hoping that once we used a trusted CA then we wouldn't have to deal with users facing this dialogue. And if not, any tips as to where I should look to start fixing the problem?
You can find images of the trust certificate window here and the details for the cert here
Short answer: Your certificate is missing an e-mail field in the subject.
When we moved to using a software vendor certificate from an individual developer certificate, we encountered the same problem. The only difference between our certificates is that the individual developer cert has an e-mail address in the subject (the field named "E") and the new software vendor cert does not. GlobalSign allows you to reissue certificates, so we reissued our software vendor certificate with a generic e-mail address in the subject field. That fixed the Eclipse problem and customers no longer see the "Do you trust these certificates?" window.
By the way, our certificate does not have an Organizational Unit defined, and that does not cause problems with Eclipse.
this is mostly a deployement than a programming question.
If I were to buy an SSL certificate from a CA, would I be able to use it to sign other applications (such as symbian, android, iphone ones)?
You need to get two different certificates. One to secure a server (https) and one to sign code. You can compare code signing certificates here
Server certificates (those that you'd use to enable HTTPS on a web server) are rarely enabled for code signing. I haven't looked at every CA in the world, and there probably are exceptions, but the more "legit" a CA is, the less likely they are to issue one certificate for both applications. In the end, I wouldn't expect to use the same certificate for both.
There is a better chance that a single code-signing certificate is accepted by most platforms. The developer documentation of each platform should list what CA certificates are built-in as trusted roots. In addition, most platforms will allow a user to view and modify the list.
You need to buy a certificate that is specifically authorized for code singing. In other words, the certificate must have the Extended Key Usage (EKU) for Code signing. Object ID (OID) for code signing can be found here
Most commercial CA's should be able to tell you which of their certificates have this.