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What is Certificate Pinning?

A security technique that associates a host with its expected TLS certificate or public key, preventing man-in-the-middle attacks with fraudulent certificates.

Certificate pinning validates that a server presents a specific certificate or public key, rather than any certificate signed by a trusted CA. This protects against compromised Certificate Authorities and rogue certificates. Implementation approaches include pinning the leaf certificate (most restrictive), pinning the intermediate CA certificate, or pinning the public key (most flexible during certificate renewal). Mobile apps commonly use certificate pinning for API communication. Challenges include handling certificate rotation (pin the backup key too) and debugging (pinning failures are silent). HTTP Public Key Pinning (HPKP) for browsers was deprecated due to the risk of permanent lockout.

Related Terms

PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)
A framework of policies, hardware, and software for creating, managing, distributing, and revoking digital certificates.
XSS (Cross-Site Scripting)
An attack that injects malicious scripts into web pages viewed by other users, potentially stealing data or session tokens.
Security Hardening
The process of reducing a system's attack surface by disabling unnecessary services, applying patches, and configuring security controls.
SAST (Static Application Security Testing)
Automated analysis of source code to find security vulnerabilities without executing the application.
Security Headers
HTTP response headers that instruct browsers to enable security features like XSS protection, framing prevention, and content type enforcement.
OAuth 2.0
An authorization framework that allows third-party applications to access user resources without sharing passwords.
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