How can I configure Apache HttpClient 4.x to use a specific Websphere SSL alias? - authentication

Question

We have an issue in our environment when using Websphere to attempt to connect to an external system with HttpClient 4.x (current version is 4.2.1). Connecting to the external system is fine with their certificate being installed in Websphere with no additional configuration of HttpClient. However, when they enabled mutual authentication, it no longer works and we get a SSLPeerUnverifiedException exception:
javax.net.ssl.SSLPeerUnverifiedException: peer not authenticated,
at com.ibm.jsse2.SSLSessionImpl.getPeerCertificates(SSLSessionImpl.java:105),
at org.apache.http.conn.ssl.AbstractVerifier.verify(AbstractVerifier.java:128),
at org.apache.http.conn.ssl.SSLSocketFactory.connectSocket(SSLSocketFactory.java:572),
at org.apache.http.impl.conn.DefaultClientConnectionOperator.openConnection(DefaultClientConnectionOperator.java:180),
at org.apache.http.impl.conn.ManagedClientConnectionImpl.open(ManagedClientConnectionImpl.java:294),
at org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultRequestDirector.tryConnect(DefaultRequestDirector.java:640),
at org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultRequestDirector.execute(DefaultRequestDirector.java:479),
at org.apache.http.impl.client.AbstractHttpClient.execute(AbstractHttpClient.java:906),
at org.apache.http.impl.client.AbstractHttpClient.execute(AbstractHttpClient.java:1066),
I was provided the following code sample, and I was wondering if there's any way to configure HttpClient to use an explicit alias like this code sample does. I've tried to find good documentation on using SSL mutual authentication with HttpClient 4 and haven't been able to find much.
Here's the code sample:
private HttpURLConnection getConnection(String server, String machine,
String port) throws Exception {
URL u = new URL(server);
HttpsURLConnection connection = (HttpsURLConnection) u.openConnection();
String alias = "CellDefaultSSLSettings";
final HashMap connectionInfo = new HashMap();
connectionInfo.put(JSSEHelper.CONNECTION_INFO_DIRECTION,
JSSEHelper.DIRECTION_OUTBOUND);
connectionInfo.put(JSSEHelper.CONNECTION_INFO_REMOTE_HOST, machine);
connectionInfo.put(JSSEHelper.CONNECTION_INFO_REMOTE_PORT, port);
javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory sslFact = JSSEHelper.getInstance()
.getSSLSocketFactory(alias, connectionInfo, null);
connection.setSSLSocketFactory(sslFact);
connection.setDoOutput(true);
connection.setDoInput(true);
connection.setRequestMethod("POST");
return connection;
}
Basically, how do I make HttpClient use "CellDefaultSSLSettings"?

Answer 1

Fundamentally this problem has nothing to do with HttpClient. HttpClient can be configured to establish HTTPS connections using any custom SSLContext or SSLSocketFactory instance. This is basically about how to use JSSE APIs to configure SSLContext in the right way. In your particular case JSSEHelper does all the hard work for you.
// JSSE socket factory
javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory jssesf = JSSEHelper.getInstance().getSSLSocketFactory(alias, connectionInfo, null);
// HC socket factory
SSLSocketFactory hcsf = new SSLSocketFactory(jssesf, SSLSocketFactory.BROWSER_COMPATIBLE_HOSTNAME_VERIFIER);
This will give a connection socket factory that can be registered with the connection manager.
HttpClient 4.3 also comes with SSLContextBuilder class which can be used to assemble custom SSL configurations using fluid builder API.
https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/httpcomponents/httpclient/trunk/httpclient/src/main/java/org/apache/http/conn/ssl/SSLContextBuilder.java

Answer 2

oleg's answer helped me out.
What I did was extend the DefaultHttpClient, and each constructor takes a String argument for the destination URL and calls a method setupScheme:
private void setupScheme(final String url) throws Exception {
Scheme scheme = new Scheme("https", 443, retrieveWebsphereSSLConnectionFactory(url));
getConnectionManager().getSchemeRegistry().register(scheme);
}
The method retrieveWebsphereSSLConnectionFactory essentially combines the code from the sample with the code oleg provided:
private SchemeSocketFactory retrieveWebsphereSSLConnectionFactory(final String url)
throws SSLException, URISyntaxException {
final String alias = "CellDefaultSSLSettings";
final HashMap<String, String> connectionInfo = new HashMap<String, String>();
connectionInfo.put(JSSEHelper.CONNECTION_INFO_DIRECTION, JSSEHelper.DIRECTION_OUTBOUND);
connectionInfo.put(JSSEHelper.CONNECTION_INFO_REMOTE_HOST,
URIUtils.extractHost(new URI(url)).getHostName());
connectionInfo.put(JSSEHelper.CONNECTION_INFO_REMOTE_PORT, "443");
return new SSLSocketFactory(JSSEHelper.getInstance().getSSLSocketFactory(alias, connectionInfo, null),
SSLSocketFactory.BROWSER_COMPATIBLE_HOSTNAME_VERIFIER);
}