ASIHTTPRequest https request & SSL

Question

I'm trying to send out a very simple ASIHTTPRequest with https. Although I have set the validatesSecureCertificate flag to "NO", I still get an odd response for my request:

A connection failure occurred: SSL problem (Possible causes may include a bad/expired/self-signed certificate, clock set to wrong date)

The code I am using is pretty straightforward, I am removing the actual parameters for security reasons:

NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"https://secured.cet.ac.il/KotarServices/getMyBooks.aspx?username=xxxxxxxx&password=xxxxx&packageid=x"];
    ASIHTTPRequest *request = [ASIHTTPRequest requestWithURL:url];
    [request setDidFailSelector:@selector(getMyBooksFailedWithError:)];
    [request setDidFinishSelector:@selector(getMyBooksFinishedWithResult:)];
    [request setDelegate:self];
    [request setValidatesSecureCertificate:NO];
    [request startAsynchronous];

Digging deeper into the code, I see that the request fails on a "-9807" error code, which is related only to the operating system and has nothing to do with the server I am interacting with (SecureTransport.h maps this out to be "invalid certificate chain"). Any ideas how to overcome this issue? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I remember i had a similar problem with a GoDaddy certificate and had to make the following change in ASIHTTPRequest.m, below the comment "Handle SSL certificate settings", inside the if(![self validatesSecureCertificate]), around line 1160:

[sslProperties setObject:(NSString *)kCFBooleanTrue forKey:(NSString *)kCFStreamSSLAllowsAnyRoot];

Answer 2

I ran into this with a GoDaddy certificate I just bought today. One correction to trydis's solution: I think you want this outside the if(![self validatesSecureCertificate]), since you actually want to validate the certificate. As the comment says, stuff inside the if clause "tells CFNetwork not to validate SSL certificates". TBH, I have no idea why the GoDaddy certificate is being interpreted by the client as a root certificate, which is what's necessitating this change in the first place.