Android - protecting in app purchases with server side verification

My small contribution to reduce fraud in in-app purchases

Signature verification on an external server, on your Android code :

verifySignatureOnServer()

  private boolean verifySignatureOnServer(String data, String signature) {
        String retFromServer = "";
        URL url;
        HttpsURLConnection urlConnection = null;
        try {
            String urlStr = "https://www.example.com/verify.php?data=" + URLEncoder.encode(data, "UTF-8") + "&signature=" + URLEncoder.encode(signature, "UTF-8");

            url = new URL(urlStr);
            urlConnection = (HttpsURLConnection) url.openConnection();
            InputStream in = urlConnection.getInputStream();
            InputStreamReader inRead = new InputStreamReader(in);
            retFromServer = convertStreamToString(inRead);

        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } finally {
            if (urlConnection != null) {
                urlConnection.disconnect();
            }
        }

        return retFromServer.equals("good");
    }

convertStreamToString()

 private static String convertStreamToString(java.io.InputStreamReader is) {
        java.util.Scanner s = new java.util.Scanner(is).useDelimiter("\\A");
        return s.hasNext() ? s.next() : "";
    }

verify.php on the root directory of web hosting

<?php
// get data param
$data = $_GET['data'];

// get signature param
$signature = $_GET['signature'];

// get key
$key_64 = ".... put here the base64 encoded pub key from google play console , all in one row !! ....";



$key =  "-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----\n".
        chunk_split($key_64, 64,"\n").
       '-----END PUBLIC KEY-----';   
//using PHP to create an RSA key
$key = openssl_get_publickey($key);


// state whether signature is okay or not
$ok = openssl_verify($data, base64_decode($signature), $key, OPENSSL_ALGO_SHA1);
if ($ok == 1) {
    echo "good";
} elseif ($ok == 0) {
    echo "bad";
} else {
    die ("fault, error checking signature");
}

// free the key from memory
openssl_free_key($key);

?>

NOTES:

• You should encrypt the URL in your java code, if not the URL can be found easy with a simple text search in your decompressed app apk

• Also better to change php file name, url arguments, good/bad reponses to something with no sense.

• verifySignatureOnServer() should be run in a separated thread if not a network on main thread exception will be thrown. An alternative would be to use Volley.

IN-APP BILLING LIBRARY UPDATE

Using the library, the data to be verified is returned by Purchase.getOriginalJson() and the signature by Purchase.getSignature()

Hope it will help ...