CFNetwork SSLHandshake failed iOS 9

Question

has anyone with the iOS 9 beta 1 had this issue?

I use standard NSURLConnection to connect to a webservice and as soon as a call is made to the webservice i get the below error. This is currently working in iOS 8.3

Possible beta bug? any ideas or thoughts would be great ! I know its very early in iOS 9 development

Here is the full error:

CFNetwork SSLHandshake failed (-9824) NSURLSession/NSURLConnection HTTP load failed (kCFStreamErrorDomainSSL, -9824)

 NSURLRequest * urlRequest = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"https://mywebserviceurl"]];
        NSURLResponse * response = nil;
        NSError * error = nil;
        NSData * data = [NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:urlRequest
                                                  returningResponse:&response
                                                              error:&error];

Answer 1

After two days of attempts and failures, what worked for me is this code of womble

with One change, according to this post we should stop using sub-keys associated with the NSExceptionDomains dictionary of that kind of Convention

  NSTemporaryExceptionMinimumTLSVersion

And use at the new Convention

  NSExceptionMinimumTLSVersion

instead.

apple documentation

my code

<key>NSAppTransportSecurity</key>
    <dict>
        <key>NSExceptionDomains</key>
        <dict>
            <key>YOUR_HOST.COM</key>
            <dict>
                <key>NSExceptionAllowsInsecureHTTPLoads</key>
                <true/>
                <key>NSExceptionMinimumTLSVersion</key>
                <string>TLSv1.0</string>
                <key>NSExceptionRequiresForwardSecrecy</key>
                <false/>
                <key>NSIncludesSubdomains</key>
                <true/>
            </dict>
        </dict>
    </dict>

Answer 2

Why makes it too complicated-

Just set iOS Development Target - 8.0

And Cmd+Shift+K

Answer 3

If your backend uses a secure connection ant you get using NSURLSession

CFNetwork SSLHandshake failed (-9801)
NSURLSession/NSURLConnection HTTP load failed (kCFStreamErrorDomainSSL, -9801)

you need to check your server configuration especially to get ATS version and SSL certificate Info:

Instead of just Allowing Insecure Connection by setting NSExceptionAllowsInsecureHTTPLoads = YES , instead you need to Allow Lowered Security in case your server do not meet the min requirement (v1.2) for ATS (or better to fix server side).

Allowing Lowered Security to a Single Server

<key>NSExceptionDomains</key>
<dict>
    <key>api.yourDomaine.com</key>
    <dict>
        <key>NSExceptionMinimumTLSVersion</key>
        <string>TLSv1.0</string>
        <key>NSExceptionRequiresForwardSecrecy</key>
        <false/>
    </dict>
</dict>

use openssl client to investigate certificate and get your server configuration using openssl client :

openssl s_client  -connect api.yourDomaine.com:port //(you may need to specify port or  to try with https://... or www.)

..find at the end

SSL-Session:
    Protocol  : TLSv1
    Cipher    : AES256-SHA
    Session-ID: //
    Session-ID-ctx: 
    Master-Key: //
    Key-Arg   : None
    Start Time: 1449693038
    Timeout   : 300 (sec)
    Verify return code: 0 (ok)

App Transport Security (ATS) require Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol version 1.2.

Requirements for Connecting Using ATS:

The requirements for a web service connection to use App Transport Security (ATS) involve the server, connection ciphers, and certificates, as follows:

Certificates must be signed with one of the following types of keys:

• Secure Hash Algorithm 2 (SHA-2) key with a digest length of at least 256 (that is, SHA-256 or greater)

• Elliptic-Curve Cryptography (ECC) key with a size of at least 256 bits

• Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) key with a length of at least 2048 bits An invalid certificate results in a hard failure and no connection.

The following connection ciphers support forward secrecy (FS) and work with ATS:

TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384 TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384 TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA

Update: it turns out that openssl only provide the minimal protocol version Protocol : TLSv1 links

Answer 4

iOS 9 and OSX 10.11 require TLSv1.2 SSL for all hosts you plan to request data from unless you specify exception domains in your app's Info.plist file.

The syntax for the Info.plist configuration looks like this:

<key>NSAppTransportSecurity</key>
<dict>
  <key>NSExceptionDomains</key>
  <dict>
    <key>yourserver.com</key>
    <dict>
      <!--Include to allow subdomains-->
      <key>NSIncludesSubdomains</key>
      <true/>
      <!--Include to allow insecure HTTP requests-->
      <key>NSExceptionAllowsInsecureHTTPLoads</key>
      <true/>
      <!--Include to specify minimum TLS version-->
      <key>NSExceptionMinimumTLSVersion</key>
      <string>TLSv1.1</string>
    </dict>
  </dict>
</dict>

If your application (a third-party web browser, for instance) needs to connect to arbitrary hosts, you can configure it like this:

<key>NSAppTransportSecurity</key>
<dict>
    <!--Connect to anything (this is probably BAD)-->
    <key>NSAllowsArbitraryLoads</key>
    <true/>
</dict>

If you're having to do this, it's probably best to update your servers to use TLSv1.2 and SSL, if they're not already doing so. This should be considered a temporary workaround.

As of today, the prerelease documentation makes no mention of any of these configuration options in any specific way. Once it does, I'll update the answer to link to the relevant documentation.

Answer 5

Another useful tool is nmap (brew install nmap)

nmap --script ssl-enum-ciphers -p 443 google.com

Gives output

Starting Nmap 7.12 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2016-08-11 17:25 IDT
Nmap scan report for google.com (172.217.23.46)
Host is up (0.061s latency).
Other addresses for google.com (not scanned): 2a00:1450:4009:80a::200e
PORT    STATE SERVICE
443/tcp open  https
| ssl-enum-ciphers: 
|   TLSv1.0: 
|     ciphers: 
|       TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA (secp256r1) - A
|       TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA (secp256r1) - A
|       TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA (secp256r1) - A
|       TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA (rsa 2048) - A
|       TLS_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA (rsa 2048) - C
|       TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA (secp256r1) - A
|       TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA (rsa 2048) - A
|     compressors: 
|       NULL
|     cipher preference: server
|   TLSv1.1: 
|     ciphers: 
|       TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA (secp256r1) - A
|       TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA (secp256r1) - A
|       TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA (secp256r1) - A
|       TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA (rsa 2048) - A
|       TLS_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA (rsa 2048) - C
|       TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA (secp256r1) - A
|       TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA (rsa 2048) - A
|     compressors: 
|       NULL
|     cipher preference: server
|   TLSv1.2: 
|     ciphers: 
|       TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA (secp256r1) - A
|       TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 (secp256r1) - A
|       TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 (secp256r1) - A
|       TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA (secp256r1) - A
|       TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384 (secp256r1) - A
|       TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 (secp256r1) - A
|       TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256 (secp256r1) - A
|       TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA (secp256r1) - A
|       TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 (secp256r1) - A
|       TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 (secp256r1) - A
|       TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA (secp256r1) - A
|       TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384 (secp256r1) - A
|       TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 (secp256r1) - A
|       TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256 (secp256r1) - A
|       TLS_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA (rsa 2048) - C
|       TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA (rsa 2048) - A
|       TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 (rsa 2048) - A
|       TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 (rsa 2048) - A
|       TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA (rsa 2048) - A
|       TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA256 (rsa 2048) - A
|       TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 (rsa 2048) - A
|     compressors: 
|       NULL
|     cipher preference: client
|_  least strength: C

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 5.48 seconds

Answer 6

The device I tested at had wrong time set. So when I tried accessing a page with a certificate that would run out soon it would deny access because the device though the certificate had expired. To fix, set proper time on the device!