How to use Jetty with Let's Encrypt certificates? - java

I want to use certificates from Let's Encrypt with a large count of Jetty servers. One of the problems is that the certificates from Let's Encrypt has a lifetime of 90 days.
To handle this the Jetty server or some extra code must renew the certificate frequently.
Can Jetty handle this self? If yes how can I enable this?
If I need to implement it self with a Java client then how can I replace the certificate dynamically via Jetty API without a restart of the Jetty server?
Edit: Some related and partial helpful links:
setting ssl keystore at runtime in Jetty
Changing Jetty SSL server certificate on-the-fly

Since version 9.3.15 you can use:
SslContextFactory.reload(Consumer<SslContextFactory>)
For details see at: https://github.com/eclipse/jetty.project/issues/918

Related

Apache directory API refuses to add user to Active Directory "(UNWILLING_TO_PERFORM)"

Im trying to add a user using Java 6 and Apache Directory API to Active Directory running on windows server 2008, but the result i get is (UNWILLING_TO_PERFORM), now i understand that it needs a secure connection and to use unicodePwd attribute to add the password, which i did, or at least tried to do.
The server admin created a certificate for the account i use when adding users, i exported it and added it to cacert in /jre/lib/security/.
I tried to see if i can just connect securely to the AD server without performing any operations, i get 2 scenarios that fail on the binding operation .bind():
1- if i connect using port 636 and use startTLS() available in ldapNetworkConnection : then i either get PROTOCOL_ERROR server will disconnect
2- if i connect using port 389 and use startTLS() available in LdapConnectionConfig i get "Failed to initialize the SSL context" and "IllegalArgumentException :TLSv1.1"
I added the trust manager but still no luck, below is the code so far.
LdapConnectionConfig config = new LdapConnectionConfig();
config.setLdapHost(IP);
config.setLdapPort(389);
TrustManagerFactory tmf = TrustManagerFactory.getInstance(TrustManagerFactory.getDefaultAlgorithm());
tmf.init((KeyStore)null);
config.setTrustManagers(tmf.getTrustManagers());
config.setName("CN=TestAdmin,CN=Users,DC=bmrk,DC=com");
config.setCredentials("P#ssw0rd");
LdapNetworkConnection ldapNetworkConnection = new LdapNetworkConnection(config);
ldapNetworkConnection.connect();
ldapNetworkConnection.startTls();
ldapNetworkConnection.bind();
// EDIT
i switched to JNDI LDAP APIs it gave me a more reasonable error, apparently the issue comes from the SSL handshake, my app isn't able to find the valid certificate, any recommendations?
Any help is really appreciated.
Thanks,
In Case anyone is interested, my only issue was in the adding the server that generated the certificate as a CA authority in the cacerts file so that the JVM can trust certificates issued by the server although it worked smoothly and perfect with JNDI ldap APIs it doesn't work with Apache Directory not sure why.
so my recommendation is to use JNDI instead of Apache Directory and make sure you export the certificate for the account used to login to Active Directory as PKCS12 and add it to the keystore.
so it's 2 certificates, 1 for the login/bind account and 1 for the server to act as a CA (Certificate Authority).
Also Java 6 support TLSv1 as a maximum security protocol which isn't the standard case with Apache LDAP, so either upgrade you Java or use JNDI.
it works perfectly with Java 7.

How to switch SSL Verify off for Neo4j's RestGraphDatabase?

I'm running my NEO4j HA cluster behind SSL.
I'm writing a client in Java that manages some data. Now since I'm only using SSL to encrypt communication, I'm using a self-signed cert. But now I'm facing an
uglycom.sun.jersey.api.client.ClientHandlerException: javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: java.security.cert.CertificateException
Any ideas how to tell Neo4J not to verify the cert?
You do not need to generate a self-signed certificate on your own, Neo4j will do that for you when configured to do so.
http://docs.neo4j.org/chunked/stable/security-server.html#_https_support
The Neo4j server includes built in support for SSL encrypted
communication over HTTPS. The first time the server starts, it
automatically generates a self-signed SSL certificate and a private
key. Because the certificate is self signed, it is not safe to rely on
for production use, instead, you should provide your own key and
certificate for the server to use.
In the case that you are using the Neo4j generated self-signed cert and you're still having issues, please update your question with your configuration details in the neo4j-server.properties file for each of your HA instances (if they aren't the same).

Client Certificate using Weblogic

Background:
I am working on a project that involves the client to authenticate itself (via client certificate). We are trying to launch a third party app which first authenticates the client cert and then launches its app.
We are using Java and SSL hanshake, and our client server is Weblogic 10.x. The client certificate is in PKCS12 format (cannot change this)
This is the piece of code for presenting the certificate:
System.setProperty("javax.net.ssl.keyStore","MyPath/cert.pfx");
System.setProperty("javax.net.ssl.keyStorePassword","MyPwd");
System.setProperty("javax.net.ssl.keyStoreType","PKCS12");
url.openConnection();
Now all this works pretty well from a standalone. The problem starts when we put this on weblogic. Sometimes it works, sometimes 'Client certificate not present' (http 403.7) is returned. I have tried various combinations (including configuring custome keystore on weblogic console) but nothing seems to work. Any idea why would weblogic altogether ignore the SSL settings (it doesnt throw an error even if I set keystore to a non-existent file)? System.setProperty for SSL just appears useless on weblogic!
In Weblogic 12c you also need add the parameter -DUseSunHttpHandler=true in order to tell the weblogic server to use the Sun Http Handlers instead of its own. Therefore you need the following Java VM parameters:
-Djavax.net.ssl.keyStore=MyPath/cert.pfx
-Djavax.net.ssl.keyStoreType=PKCS12
-Djavax.net.ssl.keyStorePassword=MyPwd
-DUseSunHttpHandler=true
Finally found the solution! Weblogic seems to over-ride the keystore configurations if it is done through Java as above. The thing that worked for me was to configure the SSL settings on JVM level, at web-logic start-up.
To make it work, I just added these Java options in the start-script for weblogic:
-Djavax.net.ssl.keyStore=MyPath/cert.pfx
-Djavax.net.ssl.keyStoreType=MyPwd
-Djavax.net.ssl.keyStorePassword=PKCS12
Restarted web-logic and SSL has been working great since then :)

What would cause SSL negotiations to succeed under .NET but fail under Java?

We have to create a web service client using Apache CXF in Java. The thing is I cannot seem to get the SSL session to properly engage. Either it fails altogether, the server fails to decipher what is sent to it once the application data is transmitted or I fail to read the responses from the server.
However when trying the same transaction using a simple soap test client built in .NET everything runs smoothly.
Server is using double authentication.
Everything is certificate based (x509) stored in the windows certificate store (windows-MY and windows-ROOT)
edit
yes, double authentication is indeed client AND server authentication.
Thus far using the bountyCastle provider instead of SunMSCAPI seems to get further but still cannot get the client authentication to work.
PLatform of client CXF 2.2.9, Sun JDK 1.6_21
server IIS 6 ASP.NET unfortunately is all I could gather, I have no control over the server and must use it as-is.
update
I am using a JKS keystore now but still am getting the problem. It seems the client is not sending his certificate to the server as part of the authentication process. As a result I get a 403.7 error from the server.
Funny thing is that I receive this error message as an HTML page that must first be decrypted before it is readable !
Presumably, by double authentication, you mean you're using client-certificate authentication in addition to server-certificate authentication (which is more common).
It would be useful to know which versions of the platforms are used on either side, and which patches have been applied.
It's possible that some of the problem come from the re-negotiation fix to CVE-2009-3555 (or lack of fix).
The problem is a flaw in the initial design of the re-negotiation in TLS, which is what was used to re-negotiate a client-certificate. There are two ways of getting a client-certificate: either the server asks for it during the initial TLS handshake, or it asks for it during a subsequent handshake (for example, once it has figured out what the request was aimed for and/or when trying to access a certain restricted area). The second method is the re-negotiation. Unfortunately, there was a security flaw in the design of the TLS protocol in that respect, which has since been fixed thanks to a TLS extension described in RFC 5746.
When the flaw was initially disclosed (around November 2009), some platforms and libraries such as Sun Java or OpenSSL rolled out a quick fix which simply disallowed any re-negotiation (so only initial negotiation of the client-certificate would work). Later on, once RFC 5746 was written, these libraries started to roll out implementations supporting this extension.
As far as I'm aware, Microsoft's default in IIS and its web framework was to use re-negotiation and not initial negotiation. In addition, it didn't roll out the initial fix to disable re-negotiation (effectively keeping the known vulnerability). It only rolled out a patch (still tolerant to old implementations by default) quite recently: Microsoft Security Bulletin MS10-049 - Critical.
There is also an explanation of the problem on this Microsoft security blog:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/srd/archive/2010/08/10/ms10-049-an-inside-look-at-cve-2009-3555-the-tls-renegotiation-vulnerability.aspx
Essentially, if you're trying to talk to a server that only supports the old negotiation style from a stack that only has the new re-negotiation style or no renegotiation at all, it's not going to work.
If your server is running using IIS or similar environment, you might be able to turn on initial client-certificate negotiation using netsh and its clientcertnegotiation=enable option.
Java doesn't rely on the OS certificate store and needs to use its own.
This will import your self-signed certificates.
cd JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/security
keytool -import -file server_cert.cer -keystore cacerts
I post this as an answer though I realize now the question was not formulated properly as I got thrown in a loop because the .NET example I had was actually performing a hack to get around the problem.
The proper question should have been
How to get Java to perform Client side Authentication on a server that does not ask for Ask for certificates ?
the answer is actually under our very noses, however to get to the answer one needs the correct question !!
Great thanks to Bruno who provided some very helpful information.
the solution can pretty much be summed up in these two questions :
Java HTTPS client certificate authentication
Client SSL authentication causing 403.7 error from IIS
Although the client is "not supposed" to send a certificate if not asked I found that by tweaking the client certificate in the keystore to contain the following :
Client certificate with all extensions
Client Private key
A concatenation of the client's complete certification chain.
push all this in the same certificate store and use it as keystore. Then load again the certification chain as a trust store. From there it should just work. This being said there is still a possibility for failure. the safest way to solve this particular issue is to have the server actively ask for a authentication certificate from the client by providing a list of accepted CA.
Hope this helps anyone else that can be stuck in the same problem, sure tooke me for a spin for a while before I reach the root of evil.

Mirth: calling an SSL SOAP web service with a client certificate

The scenario is around calling an external SSL SOAP web service from within Mirth. The web service is requires an SSL/TLS connection along with a client certificate.
The intention is to use the built-in SOAP Sender Destination to call the remote secure web service, and somehow include that client certificate.
I understand that you first need to install that client certificate into the Java runtime. This may be within the Java runtime's certificate store or the Jetty certstore.
The platform:
Windows 2003 SP2
Mirth 1.8
Java jre1.5.0_09
Question: what configuration steps (Mirth, JRE certificate stores, etc.) would you suggest to successfully have a Mirth SOAP Sender include a client certificate (*.cer) when calling a web service secured by SSL?
The Java runtime, or more specifically, the Sun JSSE provider, will present a client certificate if some system properties are set. You can read details in the JSSE Reference Guide, but the important properties are javax.net.ssl.keyStore and javax.net.ssl.keyStorePassword.
There are a few drawbacks to this approach. First, setting the key store password as a system property makes it accessible to any code running in that process—although this can be controlled if a SecurityManager is installed. Second, these settings will be used for any SSL sockets created through the "default" SSLContext. If you need different credentials for different endpoints, you'll need a Mirth-specific solution.
No starting point was specified in the question, but if starting from scratch, the easiest approach is to create a new Java Key Store ("JKS" format) and generate a new key pair and a CSR. After sending the CSR to the CA and getting a certificate back, import it into the same key store. That key store is ready to use.
If a certificate is already available, it is likely to be in a stored with its corresponding private key in PKCS #12 format (.p12 or .pfx file). These can be used directly by a Java application, but the javax.net.ssl.keyStoreType property will need to be set to "PKCS12"
Mirth 1.8 cannot send a client cert when calling a SOAP web service.
I'm late a bit here for this but actually there is a possibility that it could. By sending a few config parameters to the JVM you could get the underlying SOAP engine to switch to HTTPs and provide the proper certificate.
refer to this question for details on which parameters to set for configuring the VM
Java HTTPS client certificate authentication
you will notice there are quite a few things to take care of. Normally HTTPs and client authentication should "just work" once you configured your certificates appropriately. BUT there are some servers out there that are not so friendly to B2B style clients so you have to watch out.
Using JDK 6_21 and a few tweaks with the certificate I was able to get one of them servers to behave but it was long and painful on our side for something that takes about 15 minutes to configure properly on the server.
here is another question that address this very issue (client side authentication towards unfriendly servers).
Client SSL authentication causing 403.7 error from IIS

Categories