Contact Us

Securing Your iOS App With SSL Pinning Strategies

  1. Home
  3. Blog
  5. Securing Your iOS App With SSL Pinning Strategies

Providing a secure and reliable experience on your mobile app is key to its success. As a mobile developer, you want to ensure that your users’ data remains safe and inaccessible to third-party sources. One way you can do this is by implementing secure socket layer (SSL) pinning strategies in your iOS app.

SSL pinning is an advanced security technique that verifies the identity of a website or server by ensuring that the communications between them are encrypted and secured. It helps to prevent potential attacks by ensuring that communications are sent directly from the expected server rather than from a malicious third-party source.

In this article, we’ll explore what SSL pinning is, why it’s important for iOS apps, and how you can implement it in your own mobile development project. So if you’re ready to learn more about making sure your app remains secure, let’s get started!

What Is SSL Pinning?

SSL pinning is a security measure that helps protect your applications when communicating with a server. It works by ensuring that the server hosting your app is authenticated and configured correctly. With SSL pinning, when your app communicates with the server, it verifies the server’s identity using pins or certificates. If these don’t match up, the connection is refused and you’re alerted that something’s wrong.

In other words, SSL pinning stops malicious parties from capturing your data while it’s in transit. Without it, attackers might attach their own certificate to the connection and seize critical data like authentication tokens and user data. SSL pinning prevents your application from talking with anyone who might try to use it for their own ends by confirming the server’s legitimacy before transferring any data.

How Does SSL Pinning Work in iOS?

You might be wondering how SSL pinning can actually secure your iOS app. In a nutshell, SSL pinning requires that the client app checks the certificate presented by the server before connecting. If the certificate presented by the server matches what is stored in the client, a connection is established—otherwise it’s denied.

This method utilizes encryption keys that are introduced to the code of your app and integrated within an SDK to help protect data. Also, it adds an additional degree of security by ensuring that all communications with servers are genuine and originate from authorized sources, making it more difficult for attackers or other bad actors to intercept data as it is being sent between the device and the server.

Benefits of Implementing SSL Pinning

You know SSL Pinning is an important security measure, but did you know that it offers numerous benefits?

Here are three of the ways SSL Pinning helps secure your iOS App:

  • Increased Security

SSL Pinning helps protect information that’s transferred by devices to the server and verifies the authenticity of the server. It ensures that no man-in-the-middle (MiTM) attack can gain access to data being transferred.

  • Data confidentiality

In order to prevent hackers from intercepting data, SSL Pinning prevents monitoring of conversations. This aids in maintaining the privacy and security of sensitive information.

  • Protection against fraudulent certificates

SSL Pinning prevents attackers from exploiting valid certificates issued by a Certificate Authority (CA). For example, an attacker might use a valid certificate issued for another domain or subdomain. SSL Pinning is designed to prevent this type of attack by verifying the certificate against a predetermined set of trusted certificates, rather than relying on CAs

Limitations of SSL Pinning in iOS

You may have heard of SSL Pinning as a way to increase the security of your iOS app, but there are a few things to keep in mind before deciding to implement it.

  • Security vs. Usability

SSL Pinning isn’t foolproof, as it can impede user experience and lead to security problems like certificate revocation bypasses or hardcoding passwords in plaintext. Additionally, SSL Pinning can be used maliciously by attackers if not configured properly. So, always remember the tradeoff between security and usability.

  • Man-in-the-middle attacks

It’s important to remember that while SSL Pinning can help reduce the likelihood of data tampering, an attacker could still use a man-in-the-middle attack if they possess the right credentials and certificates. To protect against potential man-in-the-middle attempts, consider using certificate pinning in addition to other measures like adding extra layers of encryption and authentication.

Finally, make sure that you have appropriate logging in place so that any suspicious activity is detected quickly and dealt with efficiently. This will ensure that your app remains secure even when SSL Pinning has been implemented.

Strategies for Securing Your iOS Network Connections

Even though SSL Pinning makes it harder for malicious actors to intercept and manipulate your communication, there are still some steps you should take to make sure your iOS app is as secure as possible. Here are a few strategies you can use:

  • Secure your servers

Make sure that your servers are running the latest version of TLS and have strong encryption, preferably 256-bit or higher. This will guarantee the highest level of security for the connections between mobile devices and your back-end systems.

  • Implement certificate rotation

Set up regular certificate rotation for your server connections, so that attackers won’t be able to create a permanent connection with an outdated certificate. This way, you can be sure that each connection is authenticated with currently valid certificates.

  • Use HTTP Public Key Pinning (HPKP)

Using this strategy, you can pin a specific key—instead of relying on a certificate chain. With HPKP, the client must ensure that it communicates only with the specific public key that is configured in the application code.

  • Use Certificate Transparency logs

Certificate Transparency logs can help to detect malicious certificates and provide an extra layer of security for any client-server communication. Once configured in the app, these logs provide intelligence and visibility into all digital certificates being used by any server connected to your app.

Best Practices for Implementing SSL Pinning in iOS

You might be wondering what are the best practices when it comes to implementing SSL pinning in an iOS app? Well, here are some tips for getting it right:

  • Check for Certificate Revocation

Make sure to check for certificate revocation before trusting a server’s certificate. This can be done with an OCSP request to the issuer of the certificate and is necessary to ensure the certificate being used is still valid and has not been revoked.

  • Securely Store Keys

When using public/private key pairs, ensure that you’re securely storing them on the device and not making them accessible to unauthorized users or malicious code.

  • Check Certificate Validity Period

Be sure to check the validity period of SSL certificates before trusting them. Ensure that they are not expired, or close to expiration, and that they have been issued by a trustworthy entity. This can help prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.

  • Implement Certificate Pinning

Use your own custom trust store in order to pin your server’s certificate or public key, as this will help protect against spoofing if an attacker does manage to get ahold of your private key.

Using these best practices when implementing SSL pinning in your iOS app should help keep your data secure and protect your app from malicious actors who would try to intercept your communications with a fake server.

Conclusion

To recap, SSL pinning is an important security strategy for any iOS app that needs to protect its users’ sensitive data and communication. It can help reduce the risk of man-in-the-middle attacks, and provide an extra layer of assurance that data is exchanged securely. With a secure SSL pinning strategy, you can ensure that your app is secure today, and will be able to protect the data of your users no matter what the future holds.

Table of Content
Menu