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I've got web application that uses authentification via LDAP. It works flawlessly, but production version is required to use SSL. We have a server running at "ldaps://ourserver.com:636", but Spring Security throws following exception when I try to connect to it:

Root exception is javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: sun.security.validator.ValidatorException: PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested targe

Apache Directory Studio also warns me about unknown certificate, but allows to ignore the check it and eventually to connect and read the data required.

There are plenty of questions and answers here about how to implement LDAP over SSL, but no one of them provide full solution. I've got two opportunities: to make the certificate trusted or to disable certificate check at all. No matter which way I choose, I can't figure out how to use the mechanism with Spring Security:

  1. If I choose to use keytool and make the certificate trusted, I can't figure out how JVM / Tomcat / Spring Security will figure out which password I have defined (-keypass changeit).
  2. If I choose to disable the certificate validation, I can't figure out what is the place the code should be placed.

I'm also curious on how Apache Directory Studio is able to make the certificate trusted for itself without that keytool import - which significantly reduces application portability? Solution like that would be perfect for my webapp, but I haven't found anything like that all.

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  • "... or to disable certificate check at all" - obviously, that's a bad idea. That leaves you with one choice. – jww Jun 09 '14 at 03:58
  • Perhaps [tekul/spring-security/samples](https://github.com/tekul/spring-security/tree/master/samples/certificates) will be helpful to you. – jww Jun 09 '14 at 04:00

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Here is a solution I was able to use. The key thing I had to understand is that neither JVM, nor container with webapp needs to know alias and password. It's JVM headache to check all the certs registered, and this has nothing to do with your webapp. Unfortunately, the solution implies that you install the certificate for the whole JVM. That makes webapp less portable, but at least it works correctly. I've decided to provide following bash script with the webapp sources so other developers can install the cert easily on their machines:

SERVER="mydomain:636" 
CRT_NAME="mydomain.crt"
CRT_ALIAS="mydomain_cert"

echo -n | openssl s_client -connect $SERVER | sed -ne '/-BEGIN
CERTIFICATE-/,/-END CERTIFICATE-/p' > $CRT_NAME

$JAVA_HOME/bin/keytool -import -alias $CRT_ALIAS -keystore $JAVA_HOME/lib/security/cacerts -file $CRT_NAME -storepass changeit

You may wish to add additional error checks, I've omitted them to simplify the script. You will need root priviledges to launch the second command.

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