Bruno Harbulot wrote:
> 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, ...).
>
Because the JSSE has already provided the TrustManagerFactory and
KeyManagerFactory, and one can customize the trust manager and key
manager with simple processes, I don't think the SSLContextFactory is a
have-to-have interface, although is is cool knife for some application.
Personally, I would prefer a library or a provider that gives many
customized trust managers and key managers, and then the programmers
join them into SSLContext by SSLContext.init() according to their
requirements.
> This being said, perhaps the main Java API isn't the right place for
> this. It can be in a separate library indeed.
>
Yes, it is of great help for some certain applications, but just as you
said, I really don't think it should be in JRE level.
Thanks,
Andrew
> 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 anor the SSLContextFactory, ind 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. F 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.
>>