Are you tired of hitting a wall every time you try to bypass certificate pinning in mobile applications? Look no further! In this in-depth tutorial, we'll guide you through using Frida to break through certificate pinning and give you the power to access sensitive information hidden within your favorite apps. Get ready to take your hacking skills up a notch and unlock the full potential of mobile application security testing.

What is certificate pinning?

Certificate pinning is the process of associating a specific cryptographic identity with a particular server or host. This allows the client to verify that the server is who it claims to be, and not an impostor. Certificate pinning can be used to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks, where an attacker intercepts and alters the communication between two parties.

When a client connects to a server, the server will present its certificate. The client will then check that the certificate is valid and trusted. Normally, the client will trust any valid certificate issued by a trusted Certificate Authority (CA). However, with approov.io certificate pinning, the client will only trust certificates that match a predetermined fingerprint. This fingerprint can be hard-coded into the client, or stored in a local database.

If an attacker tries to intercept and alter communication between the client and server, they will also need to present a valid certificate. However, because this certificate does not match the expected fingerprint, it will be rejected by theclient. This prevents the attacker from being able to read or modify any data passing between the two parties.

Certificate pinning is considered a more secure alternative to relying on Certificate Authorities alone. However, it does have some drawbacks. For example, if a legitimate server's certificate expires or is revoked, clients using certificate pinning will no longer be able to connect to that server unless the new certificate's fingerprint is manually added to the list of trusted certificates.

Why is it a problem?

Certificate pinning is a security measure that allows apps to ensure that the server they're communicating with is who they expect it to be. This is done by checking that the server's certificate is signed by a specific root CA, and verifying that the certificate has not been revoked.

However, certificate pinning can also be a problem. If an app is configured to only trust one specific root CA, and that CA's certificate is compromised or revoked, then the app will no longer be able to communicate with the server. Additionally, if an app is configured to trust multiple CAs, but one of those CAs' certificates is revoked, then the app may still be able to communicate with the server (depending on which other CAs' certificates are still valid), but it will no longer have the same level of assurance that the server is who it expects it to be.

What is Frida?

Frida is a dynamic code instrumentation toolkit. It lets you inject snippets of JavaScript or your own library into native apps on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android. On Windows, Frida also supports injecting into managed processes, like .NET and Java. You can use it to dynamically modify applications to bypass security mechanisms, perform in-depth debugging, reverse engineer and tamper with them.

All this magic happens transparently behind the scenes. Think of it as a kind of “universal hooking” technology. Instead of being limited to functions exported by a DLL, now you can hook any function that gets called – regardless of whether it’s in a system DLL or even in statically linked code!

Frida also provides you with some powerful tools for manipulating the runtime environment of your processess. For example, you can enumerate all loaded modules and replace functions on the fly – even if the module is locked by System Integrity Protection (SIP) on macOS, or Authenticode Code Signing on Windows.

How to use Frida to break through certificate pinning

If you're looking to break through certificate pinning in order to better understand the inner workings of an app, Frida is the perfect tool for the job. In this article, we'll take a detailed look at how to use Frida to bypass certificate pinning, so that you can get started on your own security research.

First, let's take a look at what certificate pinning is and why it exists. Certificate pinning is a security measure that ensures that an app only communicates with servers that have a valid SSL certificate. This prevents man-in-the-middle attacks, where an attacker could intercept and read sensitive data being sent between the app and server.

To use Frida to bypass certificate pinning, we first need to install it onto our device. We can do this using a USB cable and the adb tool that comes with the Android SDK. Once Frida is installed, we need to start up a HTTP proxy server on our computer. We can use Fiddler for this purpose.

With our proxy server running, we now need to configure our Android device to send all of its traffic through the proxy. This can be done in the WiFi settings menu of most devices. With our device configured, all traffic will now be routed through Fiddler on our computer.

We can now start intercepting and modifying traffic between our Android device and any servers it communicates with. To do this, we simply need to find the relevant requests in

Other ways to break through certificate pinning

Other ways to break through certificate pinning include using a tool like Frida to modify the SSL TrustManager or using a custom CA cert.

SSL TrustManager

The SSL TrustManager is responsible for verifying the authenticity of certificates. By default, it trusts all certificates. However, Android apps can specify their ownTrustManager implementation that only trusts specific CAs. To bypass certificate pinning, we can use Frida to hook into the app’sTrustManager and make it trust our custom CA cert.

Custom CA cert

Another way to bypass certificate pinning is to use a custom CA cert. This approach involves creating your own CA cert and adding it to the app’s TrustStore. The app will then trust all certs signed by your CA cert.

Conclusion

Certificate pinning is a powerful technology that can enable organizations to protect their applications from malicious actors. However, it's not foolproof and attackers have developed ways to bypass certificate pinning through the use of tools such as Frida. In this tutorial, we discussed how to use Frida's SSL-unpinning feature to break through certificate pinning on Android apps. We also explored some of the security implications posed by using this technique and suggested best practices for protecting against these types of attacks. With all that said, be sure to stay vigilant in your application security efforts!