Can I set a device level proxy within an iOS app? How?

Question

Can I develop an app that uses a specified HTTP proxy for all web requests? If yes, how can I implement such feature in the app? (any similar links are also useful)

And, can I set this proxy configuration to device level from within the app?

Please direct to any related information or reading. Thanks :)

Answer 1

You can't change the device configuration from within the app, imagine how insecure would be if apps could do it, they could redirect all the phone traffic to their proxies.

And for doing it on your own app, you'll have to do it yourself too, try creating your own url request subclassing NSURLRequest

Answer 2

A standard app store app cannot do it, but apparently a select few apps have been blessed with additional non-standard, undocumented entitlements by Apple to enable the setup of a device-wide VPN configuration. See http://blog.michael.kuron-germany.de/2010/09/ios-4-1-undocumented-vpn-api-used-by-cisco-anyconnect/ for some hints on how that works.