Need to view website with a self-signed certificate and http authentication

Question

I am having trouble viewing a website that has a self-signed certificate and also requires HTTP authentication. Currently I am trying to implement it by using How to display the Authentication Challenge in UIWebView? and UIWebView to view self signed websites (No private api, not NSURLConnection) - is it possible? as guides on how to accomplish this. I'm also trying to use the private api method of bypassing self-signed certificates but I'm having trouble finding the link to it. But the private api header is:

@interface NSURLRequest (DummyInterface)
+ (BOOL)allowsAnyHTTPSCertificateForHost:(NSString*)host;
+ (void)setAllowsAnyHTTPSCertificate:(BOOL)allow forHost:(NSString*)host;
@end 

Then I have these as the important functions:

- (BOOL)webView:(UIWebView *)webView shouldStartLoadWithRequest:(NSURLRequest *)request navigationType:(UIWebViewNavigationType)navigationType;
{
    NSLog(@"Did start loading: %@ auth:%d", [[request URL] absoluteString], _authenticated);

      [NSURLRequest setAllowsAnyHTTPSCertificate:YES forHost:[URL host]];

   _request=[NSURLRequest requestWithURL:URL];

    if (!_authenticated) {
        _authenticated = NO;

        [NSURLRequest setAllowsAnyHTTPSCertificate:YES forHost:[URL host]];

        _urlConnection = [[NSURLConnection alloc] initWithRequest:_request delegate:self];

        [_urlConnection start];

       [mainWebView loadRequest:_request];

        return NO;
    }

    return YES;

}

Basically calls a nsurl connection to pass in log in credentials.

    #pragma mark - NURLConnection delegate

    - (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveAuthenticationChallenge:(NSURLAuthenticationChallenge *)challenge;
    {




        NSLog(@"WebController Got auth challange via NSURLConnection");

        [NSURLRequest setAllowsAnyHTTPSCertificate:YES forHost:[URL host]];

        if ([challenge previousFailureCount] == 0)
        {
            _authenticated = YES;



            NSURLCredential *credential = [NSURLCredential credentialWithUser:@"username"
              password:@"password"
                                                                   persistence:NSURLCredentialPersistenceForSession];

           [challenge.sender useCredential:credential forAuthenticationChallenge:challenge];

        NSLog(@"credential created");

    } else
    {
        NSLog(@"previous authentication failure");
        [[challenge sender] cancelAuthenticationChallenge:challenge];
    }
}

and

- (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveResponse:(NSURLResponse *)response;
{
    NSLog(@"WebController received response via NSURLConnection");

    NSHTTPURLResponse *httpResponse = (NSHTTPURLResponse *)response;
     NSLog(@"remote url returned error %d %@",[httpResponse statusCode],[NSHTTPURLResponse localizedStringForStatusCode:[httpResponse statusCode]]);

    NSLog(@"The response is =%@",response);


   _authenticated = YES;

  [NSURLRequest setAllowsAnyHTTPSCertificate:YES forHost:[URL host]];

    NSURLRequest *urlRequest = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:URL];

    [mainWebView loadRequest:urlRequest];

    [_urlConnection cancel];    
}

Answer 1

This is easy to implement using AFNetworking
I did it by subclassing AFHTTPRequestOperation and adding this code to the init

// SSL Support
[self setAuthenticationChallengeBlock:^(NSURLConnection *connection, NSURLAuthenticationChallenge *challenge) {
    if ([challenge.protectionSpace.authenticationMethod isEqualToString:NSURLAuthenticationMethodServerTrust]) {
        [challenge.sender useCredential:[NSURLCredential credentialForTrust:challenge.protectionSpace.serverTrust] forAuthenticationChallenge:challenge];
    }
}];
[self setAuthenticationAgainstProtectionSpaceBlock:^BOOL(NSURLConnection *connection, NSURLProtectionSpace *protectionSpace) {
    if([[protectionSpace authenticationMethod] isEqualToString:NSURLAuthenticationMethodServerTrust]) {
        if(shouldAllowSelfSignedCert) {
            return YES; // Self-signed cert will be accepted
        } else {
            return NO;  // Self-signed cert will be rejected
        }
        // Note: it doesn't seem to matter what you return for a proper SSL cert
        //       only self-signed certs
    }
    // If no other authentication is required, return NO for everything else
    // Otherwise maybe YES for NSURLAuthenticationMethodDefault and etc.
    return NO;
}];

You can also add your authorization headers to the subclass, which makes using the connection in various parts of your app very simple.

Answer 2

Using these below two methods we can allow self signed certificates

-(BOOL)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection canAuthenticateAgainstProtectionSpace:(NSURLProtectionSpace *)protectionSpace;

-(void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didReceiveAuthenticationChallenge:(NSURLAuthenticationChallenge *)challenge;

I have answered in-depth using these methods here

Answer 3

Override NSURLConnectionDelegate's

- (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection willSendRequestForAuthenticationChallenge:(NSURLAuthenticationChallenge *)challenge;

The following will accept any SSL certificate without a host validation and therefore is insecure. You should have a resource file containing all valid hosts and compare certificates using the Security framework.

- (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection willSendRequestForAuthenticationChallenge:(NSURLAuthenticationChallenge *)challenge {
    if ([challenge.protectionSpace.authenticationMethod isEqualToString:NSURLAuthenticationMethodServerTrust]) {
        [challenge.sender useCredential:[NSURLCredential credentialForTrust:challenge.protectionSpace.serverTrust] forAuthenticationChallenge:challenge];
    } else {
        [challenge.sender performDefaultHandlingForAuthenticationChallenge:challenge];
    }
}

Have you looked into using ASIHTTPRequest? I believe it has methods which simplify this.