Poor SSL Implementations Leave Many Android Apps Vulnerable

Trailrunner7 writes "There are thousands of apps in the Google Play mobile market that contain serious mistakes in the way that SSL/TLS is implemented, leaving them vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks that could compromise sensitive user data such as banking credentials, credit card numbers and other information. Researchers from a pair of German universities conducted a detailed analysis of thousands of Android apps and found that better than 15 percent of those apps had weak or bad SSL implementations. The researchers conducted a detailed study of 13,500 of the more popular free apps on Google Play, the official Android app store, looking at the SSL/TLS implementations in them and trying to determine how complete and effective those implementations are. What they found is that more than 1,000 of the apps have serious problems with their SSL implementations that make them vulnerable to MITM attacks, a common technique used by attackers to intercept wireless data traffic. In its research, the team was able to intercept sensitive user data from these apps, including credit card numbers, bank account information, PayPal credentials and social network credentials."

Comments

A question

[Chrisq]

The article says:

Researchers from a pair of German universities conducted a detailed analysis of thousands of Android apps and found that better than 15 percent of those apps had weak or bad SSL implementations.

I would have thought that an SSL implementation, complete with certificate chain validation would be provided by the OS, and that apps would use that. Only apps that had special requirements should have to implement SSL. Does anyone know if android does provide a TLS interface, and if so are the apps ignoring the platform service?

A lot of apps use SSL

[Kagetsuki]

I myself have implemented them for shopping apps (SSL for anything dealing with user details, payment, etc.). When you're communicating with an external service that requires (or where you want to use) encrypted connections and that service only offers SSL (this is probably 90% of the time) you need to use it. Now the catch here is that the standard SSL handlers available to you in Android provide an "ideal" setup, where servers and certs are exactly as they "should" be. The problem is unless you are paying rediculous ammounts for dedicated SSL services and high quality certs your setup will not be the "ideal", and you'll have to make exceptions by overriding code.

As an example, in the shopping system I set up there were two sets of certs, one set was signed [payment gateway] the other wasn't [user control pannel]. I had to jump through a few hoops, and the app would be open for man-in-the-middle if set up right - but luckilly all they'd get would be user login details, address and phone number - billing is all external and requires a separate authorization.

Re:A lot of apps use SSL

[sithlord2]

What do you define as rediculous amount of money? I pay 50 USD/year for a signed ssl certificate. My SSL setup scores an "A" on the SSLLab test.

With those prices today, I cannot find one argument in favor of a self-signed certificate. Especially not if you are using it in a commercial product. Get a cheap signed certificate and use the SSL framework on your platform in the way it is intended.

I do hope the example you mentioned occured somewhere in the nineties or so, when ssl certs were indeed still expensive.