Secure Programming Cookbook for C and C++

8.19. Minimizing the Window of Vulnerability When Authenticating Without a PKI

Problem

You have an application (typically a client) that is likely to receive from a server identifying information such as a certificate or key that may not necessarily be able to be automatically verified—for example, because there is no PKI.

Without a way to absolutely defend against man-in-the-middle attacks in an automated fashion, you want to do the best that you can, either by having the user manually do certificate validation or by limiting the window of vulnerability to the first connection.

Solution

Either provide the user with trusted certificate information over a secure channel and allow him to enter that information, or prompt the user the first time you see a certificate, and remember it for subsequent connections.

These solutions push the burden of authentication off onto the user.

Discussion

It is common for small organizations to host some kind of a server that is SSL-enabled without a certificate that has been issued by a third-party CA such as VeriSign. Most often, such an organization issues its own certificate using its own CA. A prime example would be an SSL-enabled POP3 or SMTP server. Unfortunately, when this is the case, your software needs to have some way of allowing the client to indicate that the certificate presented by the server is acceptable.

There are two basic ways to do this:

• Provide the user with some way to add the CA’s certificate to a list of trusted certificates. This ...