How to use NSURLConnection to connect with SSL for an untrusted cert?

Question

I have the following simple code to connect to a SSL webpage

NSMutableURLRequest *urlRequest=[NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:url]; [ NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest: urlRequest returningResponse: nil error: &error ]; 

Except it gives an error if the cert is a self signed one Error Domain=NSURLErrorDomain Code=-1202 UserInfo=0xd29930 "untrusted server certificate". Is there a way to set it to accept connections anyway (just like in a browser you can press accept) or a way to bypass it?

Answer 1

There is a supported API for accomplishing this! Add something like this to your NSURLConnection delegate:

- (BOOL)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection canAuthenticateAgainstProtectionSpace:(NSURLProtectionSpace *)protectionSpace {   return [protectionSpace.authenticationMethod isEqualToString:NSURLAuthenticationMethodServerTrust]; }  - (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveAuthenticationChallenge:(NSURLAuthenticationChallenge *)challenge {   if ([challenge.protectionSpace.authenticationMethod isEqualToString:NSURLAuthenticationMethodServerTrust])     if ([trustedHosts containsObject:challenge.protectionSpace.host])       [challenge.sender useCredential:[NSURLCredential credentialForTrust:challenge.protectionSpace.serverTrust] forAuthenticationChallenge:challenge];    [challenge.sender continueWithoutCredentialForAuthenticationChallenge:challenge]; } 

Note that connection:didReceiveAuthenticationChallenge: can send its message to challenge.sender (much) later, after presenting a dialog box to the user if necessary, etc.

Answer 2

If you're unwilling (or unable) to use private APIs, there's an open source (BSD license) library called ASIHTTPRequest that provides a wrapper around the lower-level CFNetwork APIs. They recently introduced the ability to allow HTTPS connections using self-signed or untrusted certificates with the -setValidatesSecureCertificate: API. If you don't want to pull in the whole library, you could use the source as a reference for implementing the same functionality yourself.