Hi Xuelei,
Thanks for looking into this.
I agree with you, everything that's required is already in the JavaSE
API. I find, however, that using these classes requires a careful
reading of the JSSE ref. guide and the Certification path ref. guide,
both of which are rather long and non-trivial (at least to me). I
suspect many developers don't have time to get into such a depth of details.
One of the use-cases that was the motivation for PKIXSSLContextFactory
in jSSLutils was to be able to add CRLs quite easily. Thus, you get
something like this:
PKIXSSLContextFactory sslContextFactory =
new PKIXSSLContextFactory(keyStore, "keypassword", trustStore);
sslContextFactory.addCrl("
http://ca.example.org/root-crl");
sslContextFactory.addCrl("
http://ca.example.org/intermediate-crl");
SSLContext sslContext = sslContextFactory.buildSSLContext();
It's true that it's not possible to cover all cases, but I would guess
that there is small set of cases that are more frequent (such as adding
CRLs explicitly).
Even some high-profile projects don't necessarily handle this case, or
haven't been doing it for a long time (for example, as far as I can see,
CRL support was added to Tomcat only in 2006, and it accepts only one
CRL file).
I was only suggesting that an SSLContext factory be added to the main
API because it seems that a few projects create their own (named one way
or another). Having an SSLContextFactory interface and perhaps a default
PKIX-based implementation (or following the default value) that would
take a keystore and truststore (or fall back to either default values)
might help harmonise the practice amongst various projects (such as
Tomcat, Grizzly/Glassfish, Jetty, Restlet, ...).
This being said, perhaps the main Java API isn't the right place for
this. It can be in a separate library indeed.
Best wishes,
Bruno.
Xuelei Fan wrote:
> Hi Bruno,
>
> I have read your jsslutils project times, it is a really good practice
> to wrap complex logics into a simple one.
>
> By my understanding (If I'm wrong or something missed, correct me), the
> underlying requirements for SSLContextFactory are:
> 1. multiple SSLContext instances per thread or request.
> 2. customizable key/trust managers.
> 3. support CRLs.
>
> Let's discuss it one by one:
> 1. multiple SSLContext instances per thread or request.
> SSLContext.init(KeyManager[], TrustManager[], SecureRandom)[1][2]
> could be used to create SSLContext at anytime you want to.
>
> 2. customizable key/trust managers.
> KeyManagerFactory[3] defines two initialization methods,
> KeyManagerFactory.init(KeyStore, char[]) and
> KeyManagerFactory.init(ManagerFactoryParameters). Both of the methods
> could be used to customized the key managers.
> Similarly, TrustManagerFactory[4] also defines two initialization
> methods, TrustManagerFactory.init(KeyStore, char[]) and
> TrustManagerFactory.init(ManagerFactoryParameters). Both of the methods
> could be used to customized the trust managers.
>
> Once the customized key/trust managers created, you can use the above
> SSLContext.init() method for a customized SSLContext.
>
> 3. support CRLs.
> It is flexible to support CRLs for trust managers with
> TrustManagerFactory.init(ManagerFactoryParameters), please refer to
> [5]-[10] step by step.
>
> OK, by now, the current interfaces meets your requirements, I think. So,
> I'm not really want to add a new SSLContextFactory.
>
> And Cert path build and validation is a very very complex process for
> enterprise environments, which concerns policies, constraint, date,
> cross trust, etc. I don't think there is a simple way to hide the
> complex in a general API. For the SSLContextFactory, in order to
> provider enough candidate for various policies, constraints, a dozen of
> sub-class must be defined, I don't think it is good.
>
> So, because the TrustManagerFactory/KeyManagerFactory has provide the
> flexibility, I don't think we still need a SSLContextFactory any more.
>
> Thanks,
> Xuelei
>
> [1]: http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/javax/net/ssl/SSLContext.html
> [2]:
> http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/security/jsse/JSSERefGuide.html#SSLContext
>
> [3]:
> http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/javax/net/ssl/KeyManagerFactory.html
> [4]:
> http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/javax/net/ssl/KeyManagerFactory.html
> [5]:
> http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/javax/net/ssl/ManagerFactoryParameters.html
>
> [6]:
> http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/javax/net/ssl/CertPathTrustManagerParameters.html
>
> [7]:
> http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/security/cert/CertPathParameters.html
>
> [8]:
> http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/security/cert/PKIXBuilderParameters.html
>
> [9]:
> http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/security/cert/PKIXParameters.html
>
> [10]:
> http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/security/cert/PKIXParameters.html#setCertStores(java.util.List)
>
> [11]:
> http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/security/certpath/CertPathProgGuide.html#StorageClasses
>
>
> Bruno Harbulot wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I only found out recently about Sean Mullan's blog entry named
>> "Security Feature Planning for JDK 7" (written almost two years ago)
>> <http://weblogs.java.net/blog/mullan/archive/2006/08/security_featur.html>.
>> After I contacted him, he kindly suggested this mailing-list could be
>> the right place to discuss security features in JDK 7.
>>
>> I've recently been trying to improve SSL support in a couple of
>> open-source projects. This led me to build a small library, which I've
>> called 'jsslutils' <http://code.google.com/p/jsslutils/>.
>> The idea behind this library is to provide an SSLContextFactory which
>> can help configure an SSLContext for applications such as Restlet
>> <http://www.restlet.org/> (Grizzly, Simple or Jetty connectors) or
>> Jetty <http://www.mortbay.org/jetty/>. Sub-classes of
>> SSLContextFactory can provide extra features such as helping with the
>> configuration of CRLs, or customization of the Key/TrustManagers. (If
>> you wish to try it out, there are some jUnit tests in the subversion
>> repository.)
>> I would be interested in having your opinions regarding an
>> SSLContextFactory, and whether something similar may have already been
>> discussed. Looking at the JDK 7 API, there doesn't seem to be an such
>> a class/interface. This has been a rather useful feature for my
>> application so far, and it should make it easy to support CRLs for
>> example in something like Jetty. However, I'm not sure whether it
>> would be good to have something like this SSLContextFactory in JDK 7.
>> Perhaps there are other better ways to achieve these goals.
>>
>> One of the main problems I still find is that few applications support
>> setting up the SSLContext, which makes it sometimes difficult to
>> configure more advanced features such as CRLs. Java 6 provides a way
>> to set a default SSLContext, but this is not ideal. Sometimes, various
>> connectors in the application may want to use different SSLContexts
>> (perhaps with different truststores and keystores). For example, I
>> would like to be able to set a specific SSLContext when using
>> JavaMail, but I haven't found any documentation making it possible to
>> set up the truststore and keystores independently, instead, it seems
>> to rely on the default system properties.
>>
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Bruno.
>