Setting Up SSL for an iPhone App - Hiding From Firesheep... | Hacker News Reader

Setting Up SSL for an iPhone App - Hiding From Firesheep...

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19 pointssahillavingia10 comments

Unfortunately using encryption (like SSL) in your iPhone application generally subjects you to export compliance restrictions. This involves filing government forms and waiting some weeks.

Sample process for filing forms outlined: http://zetetic.net/blog/2009/08/03/mass-market-encryption-co...

There is an exception of "for purposes of authentication" but I'm not sure if it helps if you're always using SSL. Would be interesting to have someone chime in here.

SSL is classified "in the public domain" as defined by the Wassenaar Arrangement and as such is not subject to export restrictions. The question remains if Apple honors this in their notoriously arbitrary review process, but as far as I can tell SSL is safe.

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/ssl/ssl_faq.html

I think it comes down to the question of; if you're passing data over a secure channel (SSL), does that fall within the U.S. governments compliance requirements. mickdj had a link with a comment in it discussing this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2135081/does-my-applicati... although, it's from earlier this year...

People are allowed to bundle SSL implementations in their apps without being subject to export restrictions. I don't think it matters whether you call Apple's API to issue an HTTPS request on your behalf or whether you ship the library yourself, the latter of which is definitely legal because big-time software such as Firefox or Apache would have been sued out of existence a long time ago if it wasn't. Now, Apple (and possibly the government) might decide to see it differently, but this is the letter and spirit of the international agreement governing crypto export.

Sued out of existence? The process of exporting encryption software isn't that difficult. Fill out a form, send a copy of your source code to the NSA and you're done, generally. 10 minutes. That's second hand information but sounds reasonable to me given how much software uses encryption in some way.

Because if crypto export regulations actually were applied to SSL in practice, they'd have to prevent Apache and Firefox from getting into countries on the E:1 list, and possibly D:1 as well. And personally, I don't know any https-supporting website owner who ever filled out the mother-may-I crypto form.

(see http://www.gpo.gov/bis/ear/pdf/740spir.pdf)

Has anyone had their app get rejected for using SSL merely for authentication? What did you do to fix it? Remove SSL and resubmit, or wait it out through the government review process?

You may want to look at:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2135081/does-my-applicati...

http://blog.theanimail.com/iphone-encryption-export-complian...

Interesting... This may account for the large number of app's not using SSL. I wasent aware that this was considered part of the export compliance.

These articles appear to be from earlier this year, I'm curious if these restrictions still apply...

A great example of taking something relevant in the news and applying it to your project/business.

Great stuff.

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