MemorizingTrustManager - Private Cloud Support for Your App

MemorizingTrustManager (MTM) is a project to enable smarter and more secure use of SSL on Android. If it encounters an unknown SSL certificate, it asks the user whether to accept the certificate once, permanently or to abort the connection. This is a step in preventing man-in-the-middle attacks by blindly accepting any invalid, self-signed and/or expired certificates.

MTM is aimed at providing seamless integration into your Android application, and the source code is available under the MIT license.

Screenshots

Status

MemorizingTrustManager is in production use in the yaxim XMPP client. It is usable and easy to integrate, though it does not yet support hostname validation (the Java API makes it hard to integrate).

Integration

MTM is easy to integrate into your own application. Follow these steps or have a look into the demo application in the example directory.

1. Add MTM to your project

Download the MTM source from GitHub, or add it as a git submodule:

# plain download:
git clone https://github.com/ge0rg/MemorizingTrustManager
# submodule:
git submodule add https://github.com/ge0rg/MemorizingTrustManager

Then add a library project dependency to default.properties:

android.library.reference.1=MemorizingTrustManager

2. Add the MTM (popup) Activity to your manifest

Edit your AndroidManifest.xml and add the MTM activity element right before the end of your closing </application> tag.

		...
		<activity android:name="de.duenndns.ssl.MemorizingActivity"
			android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Translucent.NoTitleBar"
			/>
	</application>
</manifest>

3. Hook MTM as the default TrustManager for your connection type

Hooking MemorizingTrustmanager in HTTPS connections:

// register MemorizingTrustManager for HTTPS
SSLContext sc = SSLContext.getInstance("TLS");
MemorizingTrustManager mtm = new MemorizingTrustManager(this);
sc.init(null, new X509TrustManager[] { mtm }, new java.security.SecureRandom());
HttpsURLConnection.setDefaultSSLSocketFactory(sc.getSocketFactory());
HttpsURLConnection.setDefaultHostnameVerifier(
	mtm.wrapHostnameVerifier(HttpsURLConnection.getDefaultHostnameVerifier()));

For SSLSocket you should do the following:

// register MemorizingTrustManager for all SSLSockets
SSLContext sc = SSLContext.getInstance("TLS");
MemorizingTrustManager mtm = new MemorizingTrustManager(this);
HostnameVerifier hv = mtm.wrapHostnameVerifier(new org.apache.http.conn.ssl.StrictHostnameVerifier());
sc.init(null, new X509TrustManager[] { mtm }, new java.security.SecureRandom());
SSLContext.setDefault(sc);

// connect a socket
SSLSocket s = ...;
s.startHandshake();
if (!hv.verify(your_domain_name, sslSocket.getSession())) {
    throw new CertificateException("Server failed to authenticate as " + your_domain_name);
}

Or, for Smack you can use setCustomSSLContext():

org.jivesoftware.smack.ConnectionConfiguration connectionConfiguration = …
SSLContext sc = SSLContext.getInstance("TLS");
MemorizingTrustManager mtm = new MemorizingTrustManager(this);
sc.init(null, new X509TrustManager[] { mtm }, new java.security.SecureRandom());
connectionConfiguration.setCustomSSLContext(sc);
connectionConfiguration.setHostnameVerifier(
	mtm.wrapHostnameVerifier(new org.apache.http.conn.ssl.StrictHostnameVerifier()));

By default, MTM falls back to the system TrustManager before asking the user. If you do not trust the establishment, you can enforce a dialog on every new connection by supplying a defaultTrustManager = null parameter to the constructor:

MemorizingTrustManager mtm = new MemorizingTrustManager(this, null);

If you want to use a different underlying TrustManager, like AndroidPinning, just supply that to MTM's constructor:

X509TrustManager pinning = new PinningTrustManager(SystemKeyStore.getInstance(),
	new String[] {"f30012bbc18c231ac1a44b788e410ce754182513"}, 0);
MemorizingTrustManager mtm = new MemorizingTrustManager(this, pinning);

4. Profit!

Logging

MTM uses java.util.logging (JUL) for logging purposes. If you have not configured a Handler for JUL, then Android will by default log all messages of Level.INFO or higher. In order to get also the debug log messages (those with Level.FINE or lower) you need to configure a Handler accordingly. The MTM example project contains de.duenndns.mtmexample.JULHandler, which allows to enable and disable debug logging at runtime.

Alternatives

MemorizingTrustManager is not the only one out there.

NetCipher is an Android library made by the Guardian Project to improve network security for mobile apps. It comes with a StrongTrustManager to do more thorough certificate checks, an independent Root CA store, and code to easily route your traffic through the Tor network using Orbot.

AndroidPinning is another Android library, written by Moxie Marlinspike to allow pinning of server certificates, improving security against government-scale MitM attacks. Use this if your app is made to communicate with a specific server!

Contribute

Please help translating MTM into more languages!