Connecting to the HTTPS using self signed SSL certificate

Question

I've a problem connecting to the server using SSL. I'm using ASIHTTPRequest.

ASIFormDataRequest *request = [ASIFormDataRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"https://server:port"]];
//[request setValidatesSecureCertificate:NO];
[request setRequestMethod:@"POST"];
[request setTimeOutSeconds:10];

[request addRequestHeader:@"Host" value:@"server:port"];    
[request addRequestHeader:@"Content-Type" value:@"text/json; charset=utf-8"];

Above gives me the "A connection failure occurred: SSL problem (possibly a bad/expired/self-signed certificate)". If I uncomment the line [request setValidatesSecureCertificate:NO]; I get 404.

I know that that in the development environment the server uses the self-signed certificate, on production server the certificate is signed by "thawte".

So I emailed the certificate to myself, tap the attachement using Mail app on my device - it redirected me to the settings and I installted the certificate. Of course as it was self-signed it tells me that the certificate is not trusted, but it's the only problem with the certificate, it's not expired etc.

Now I do the same approach and I again receives either "A connection failure occurred: SSL problem (possibly a bad/expired/self-signed certificate)" or 404.

I've also added the certificate to my project and add following lines:

NSData* certData = [NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:[[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"cert" ofType:@"cer"]];

SecCertificateRef cert = SecCertificateCreateWithData(NULL, (CFDataRef)certData);
[request setClientCertificates:[NSArray arrayWithObject:(id)cert]];

but it doesn't change anything.

Am I missing something?

Answer 1

I would use something like the REST client addon for firefox to do the identical POST from a browser. To see what the site is really returning. It just might be that a 404 is the correct response from the server for the specified URL and the invalid cert is just preventing the SSL negotiation from completing so you never see the error.