Trust Anchor not found for Android SSL Connection

Question

I am trying to connect to an IIS6 box running a godaddy 256bit SSL cert, and I am getting the error :

java.security.cert.CertPathValidatorException: Trust an         


        

Answer 1

In my case this was happening after update to Android 8.0. The self-signed certificate Android was set to trust was using signature algorithm SHA1withRSA. Switching to a new cert, using signature algorithm SHA256withRSA fixed the problem.

Answer 2

The error message I was getting was similar but the reason was that the self signed certificate had expired. When the openssl client was attempted, it gave me the reason which was overlooked when I was checking the certificate dialog from firefox.

So in general, if the certificate is there in the keystore and its "VALID", this error will go off.

Answer 3

The solution of @Chrispix is dangerous! Trusting all certificates allows anybody to do a man in the middle attack! Just send ANY certificate to the client and it will accept it!

Add your certificate(s) to a custom trust manager like described in this post: Trusting all certificates using HttpClient over HTTPS

Although it is a bit more complex to establish a secure connection with a custom certificate, it will bring you the wanted ssl encryption security without the danger of man in the middle attack!

Answer 4

In Gingerbread phones, I always get this error: Trust Anchor not found for Android SSL Connection, even if I setup to rely on my certificate.

Here is the code I use (in Scala language):

object Security {
    private def createCtxSsl(ctx: Context) = {
        val cer = {
            val is = ctx.getAssets.open("mycertificate.crt")
            try
                CertificateFactory.getInstance("X.509").generateCertificate(is)
            finally
                is.close()
        }
        val key = KeyStore.getInstance(KeyStore.getDefaultType)
        key.load(null, null)
        key.setCertificateEntry("ca", cer)

        val tmf = TrustManagerFactory.getInstance(TrustManagerFactory.getDefaultAlgorithm)
    tmf.init(key)

        val c = SSLContext.getInstance("TLS")
        c.init(null, tmf.getTrustManagers, null)
        c
    }

    def prepare(url: HttpURLConnection)(implicit ctx: Context) {
        url match {
            case https: HttpsURLConnection ⇒
                val cSsl = ctxSsl match {
                    case None ⇒
                        val res = createCtxSsl(ctx)
                        ctxSsl = Some(res)
                        res
                    case Some(c) ⇒ c
                }
                https.setSSLSocketFactory(cSsl.getSocketFactory)
            case _ ⇒
        }
    }

    def noSecurity(url: HttpURLConnection) {
        url match {
            case https: HttpsURLConnection ⇒
                https.setHostnameVerifier(new HostnameVerifier {
                    override def verify(hostname: String, session: SSLSession) = true
                })
            case _ ⇒
        }
    }
}

and here is the connection code:

def connect(securize: HttpURLConnection ⇒ Unit) {
    val conn = url.openConnection().asInstanceOf[HttpURLConnection]
    securize(conn)
    conn.connect();
    ....
}

try {
    connect(Security.prepare)
} catch {
    case ex: SSLHandshakeException /*if ex.getMessage != null && ex.getMessage.contains("Trust anchor for certification path not found")*/ ⇒
        connect(Security.noSecurity)
}

Basically, I setup to trust on my custom certificate. If that fails, then I disable security. This is not the best option, but the only choice I know with old and buggy phones.

This sample code, can be easily translated into Java.

Answer 5

I had the same problem while connecting from Android client to Kurento server. Kurento server use jks certificates, so I had to convert pem to it. As input for conversion I used cert.pem file and it lead to such errors. But if use fullchain.pem instead of cert.pem - all is OK.

Answer 6

You can trust particular certificate at runtime.
Just download it from server, put in assets and load like this using ssl-utils-android:

OkHttpClient client = new OkHttpClient();
SSLContext sslContext = SslUtils.getSslContextForCertificateFile(context, "BPClass2RootCA-sha2.cer");
client.setSslSocketFactory(sslContext.getSocketFactory());

In the example above I used OkHttpClient but SSLContext can be used with any client in Java.

If you have any questions feel free to ask. I'm the author of this small library.