Documentation Contents

Java Cryptography Architecture
Oracle Providers Documentation

for Java Platform Standard Edition 7

Note: The Standard Names Documentation contains more information about the standard names used in this document.

Introduction

The Java platform defines a set of APIs spanning major security areas, including cryptography, public key infrastructure, authentication, secure communication, and access control. These APIs allow developers to easily integrate security mechanisms into their application code. The Java Cryptography Architecture (JCA) and its Provider Architecture is a core concept of the Java Development Kit (JDK). It is assumed readers have a solid understanding of this architecture.

This document describes the technical details of the providers shipped as part of Oracle's Java Environment.

Reminder: Cryptographic implementations in the JDK are distributed through several different providers ("Sun", "SunJSSE", "SunJCE", "SunRsaSign") for both historical reasons and by the types of services provided. General purpose applications SHOULD NOT request cryptographic services from specific providers. That is:

    getInstance("...", "SunJCE");  // not recommended
        vs.
    getInstance("...");            // recommended

Otherwise, applications are tied to specific providers that may not be available on other Java implementations. They also might not be able to take advantage of available optimized providers (for example, hardware accelerators via PKCS11 or native OS implementations such as Microsoft's MSCAPI) that have a higher preference order than the specific requested provider.

Import Limits on Cryptographic Algorithms

Due to import regulations in some countries, the Oracle implementation provides a default cryptographic jurisdiction policy file that limits the strength of cryptographic algorithms. Here are the maximum key sizes allowed by this "strong" version of the jurisdiction policy files:

If stronger algorithms are needed (for example, AES with 256-bit keys), the JCE Unlimited Strength Jurisdiction Policy Files must be obtained and installed in the JDK/JRE.

It is the user's responsibility to verify that this action is permissible under local regulations.

The SunPKCS11 Provider

The Cryptographic Token Interface Standard ( PKCS#11) provides native programming interfaces to cryptographic mechanisms, such as hardware cryptographic accelerators and Smart Cards. When properly configured, the SunPKCS11 provider enables applications to use the standard JCA/JCE APIs to access native PKCS#11 libraries. The SunPKCS11 provider itself does not contain cryptographic functionality, it is simply a conduit between the Java environment and the native PKCS11 providers. The Java PKCS#11 Reference Guide has a much more detailed treatment of this provider.

The SUN Provider

JDK 1.1 introduced the Provider architecture. The first JDK provider was named SUN, and contained two types of cryptographic services (MessageDigests and Signatures). In later releases, other mechanisms were added (SecureRandom number generators, KeyPairGenerators, KeyFactorys, and so on.).

United States export regulations in effect at the time placed significant restrictions on the type of cryptographic functionality that could be made available internationally in the JDK. For this reason, the SUN provider has historically contained cryptographic engines that did not directly encrypt or decrypt data.

The following algorithms are available in the SUN provider:

Keysize Restrictions

The SUN provider uses the following default keysizes (in bits) and enforces the following restrictions:

KeyPairGenerator

AlgorithmParameterGenerator

CertificateFactory/CertPathBuilder/ CertPathValidator/CertStore Implementations

Additional details on the SUN provider implementations for CertificateFactory, CertPathBuilder, CertPathValidator and CertStore are documented in Appendix B of the PKI Programmer's Guide.

The SunRsaSign Provider

The SunRsaSign provider was introduced in JDK 1.3 as an enhanced replacement for the RSA signatures in the SunJSSE provider.

The following algorithms are available in the SunRsaSign provider:

Keysize Restrictions

The SunRsaSign provider uses the following default keysize (in bits) and enforces the following restriction:

KeyPairGenerator

The SunJSSE Provider

The Java Secure Socket Extension (JSSE) was originally released as a separate "Optional Package" (also briefly known as a "Standard Extension"), and was available for JDK 1.2.n and 1.3.n. The SunJSSE provider was introduced as part of this release.

In earlier JDK releases, there were no RSA signature providers available in the JDK, therefore SunJSSE had to provide its own RSA implementation in order to use commonly available RSA-based certificates. JDK 5 introduced the SunRsaSign provider, which provides all the functionality (and more) of the SunJSSE provider. Applications targeted at JDK 5.0 and later should request instances of the SunRsaSign provider instead. For backward compatibility, the RSA algorithms are still available through this provider, but are actually implemented in the SunRsaSign provider.

Algorithms

The following algorithms are available in the SunJSSE provider:

Protocols

The SunJSSE supports the following protocol parameters:

Footnote 1Although SunJSSE in the Java SE 7 release supports TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2, neither version is enabled by default for client connections. Some servers do not implement forward compatibility correctly and refuse to talk to TLS 1.1 or TLS 1.2 clients. For interoperability, SunJSSE does not enable TLS 1.1 or TLS 1.2 by default for client connections.

Server connections have no such interoperability problem. TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2 are enabled by default for server connections.

Footnote 2The SSLv3, TLSv1, and TLSv1.1 protocols allow you to send SSLv3, TLSv1, and TLSv1.1 hellos encapsulated in an SSLv2 format hello.

Cipher Suites

SunJSSE supports a large number of cipher suites. The two tables that follow show the cipher suites supported by SunJSSE in preference order and the release in which they were introduced.

The first table lists the cipher suites that are enable by default. The second table shows cipher suites that are supported by SunJSSE but disabled by default.

Footnote 1 Cipher suites with SHA384 and SHA256 are available only for TLS 1.2 or later.

Footnote 2 TLS_EMPTY_RENEGOTIATION_INFO_SCSV is a new pseudo-cipher suite to support RFC 5746. See the Transport Layer Security (TLS) Renegotiation Issue section of the JSEE Reference Guide for more information.

Footnote 1 RFC 5246 TLS 1.2 forbids the use of these suites. These can be used in the SSLv3/TLS1.0/TLS1.1 protocols, but cannot be used in TLS 1.2 and later.

Footnote 2 RFC 4346 TLS 1.1 forbids the use of these suites. These can be used in the SSLv3/TLS1.0 protocols, but cannot be used in TLS 1.1 and later.

Cipher suites that use AES_256 require installation of the JCE Unlimited Strength Jurisdiction Policy Files. See Import Limits on Cryptographic Algorithms.

Cipher suites that use Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECDSA, ECDH, ECDHE, ECDH_anon) require a JCE cryptographic provider that meets the following requirements:

• The provider must implement ECC as defined by the classes and interfaces in the packages java.security.spec and java.security.interfaces. The getAlgorithm() method of elliptic curve key objects must return the string "EC".

• The provider must support the Signature algorithms SHA1withECDSA and NONEwithECDSA, the KeyAgreement algorithm ECDH, and a KeyPairGenerator and a KeyFactory for algorithm EC. If one of these algorithms is missing, SunJSSE will not allow EC cipher suites to be used.

• The provider must support all the SECG curves referenced in RFC 4492 specification, section 5.1.1 (see also appendix A). In certificates, points should be encoded using the uncompressed form and curves should be encoded using the namedCurve choice, that is, using an object identifier.

If these requirements are not met, EC cipher suites may not be negotiated correctly.

Tighter Checking of EncryptedPreMasterSecret Version Numbers

Prior to the Java SE 7 release, the SSL/TLS implementation did not check the version number in PreMasterSecret, and the SSL/TLS client did not send the correct version number by default. Unless the system property com.sun.net.ssl.rsaPreMasterSecretFix is set to true, the TLS client sends the active negotiated version, but not the expected maximum version supported by the client.

For compatibility, this behavior is preserved for SSL version 3.0 and TLS version 1.0. However, for TLS version 1.1 or later, the implementation tightens checking the PreMasterSecret version numbers as required by RFC 5246. Clients always send the correct version number, and servers check the version number strictly. The system property, com.sun.net.ssl.rsaPreMasterSecretFix, is not used in TLS 1.1 or later.

The SunJCE Provider

As described briefly in The SUN Provider, US export regulations at the time restricted the type of cryptographic functionality that could be made available in the JDK. A separate API and reference implementation was developed that allowed applications to encrypt/decrypt data. The Java Cryptographic Extension (JCE) was released as a separate "Optional Package" (also briefly known as a "Standard Extension"), and was available for JDK 1.2.x and 1.3.x. During the development of JDK 1.4, regulations were relaxed enough that JCE (and SunJSSE) could be bundled as part of the JDK.

The following algorithms are available in the SunJCE provider:

The following table lists cipher algorithms available in the SunJCE provider.

¹ PBEWithMD5AndTripleDES is a proprietary algorithm that has not been standardized.

Keysize Restrictions

The SunJCE provider uses the following default keysizes (in bits) and enforces the following restrictions:

KeyGenerator

NOTE: The various Password-Based Encryption (PBE) algorithms use various algorithms to generate key data, and ultimately depends on the targeted Cipher algorithm. For example, "PBEWithMD5AndDES" will always generate 56-bit keys.

KeyPairGenerator

AlgorithmParameterGenerator

The SunJGSS Provider

The following algorithms are available in the SunJGSS provider:

The SunSASL Provider

The following algorithms are available in the SunSASL provider:

The XMLDSig Provider

The following algorithms are available in the XMLDSig provider:

The SunPCSC Provider

The SunPCSC provider enables applications to use the Java Smart Card I/O API to interact with the PC/SC Smart Card stack of the underlying operating system. On some operating systems, it may be necessary to enable and configure the PC/SC stack before it is usable. Consult your operating system documentation for details.

On Solaris and Linux platforms, SunPCSC accesses the PC/SC stack via the libpcsclite.so library. It looks for this library in the directories /usr/$LIBISA and /usr/local/$LIBISA, where $LIBISA is expanded to lib on 32-bit platforms, lib/64 on 64-bit Solaris platforms, and lib64 on 64-bit Linux platforms. The system property sun.security.smartcardio.library may also be set to the full filename of an alternate libpcsclite.so implementation. On Windows platforms, SunPCSC always calls into winscard.dll and no Java-level configuration is necessary or possible.

If PC/SC is available on the host platform, the SunPCSC implementation can be obtained via TerminalFactory.getDefault() and TerminalFactory.getInstance("PC/SC"). If PC/SC is not available or not correctly configured, a getInstance() call will fail with a NoSuchAlgorithmException and getDefault() will return a JRE built-in implementation that does not support any terminals.

The following algorithms are available in the SunPCSC provider:

The SunMSCAPI Provider

The SunMSCAPI provider enables applications to use the standard JCA/JCE APIs to access the native cryptographic libraries, certificates stores and key containers on the Microsoft Windows platform. The SunMSCAPI provider itself does not contain cryptographic functionality, it is simply a conduit between the Java environment and the native cryptographic services on Windows.

The following algorithms are available in the SunMSCAPI provider:

Keysize Restrictions

The SunMSCAPI provider uses the following default keysizes (in bits) and enforce the following restrictions:

KeyGenerator

The SunEC Provider

The SunEC provider implements Elliptical Curve Cryptography (ECC). ECC is emerging as an attractive public-key cryptosystem for mobile/wireless and other environments. Compared to traditional cryptosystems like RSA, ECC offers equivalent security with smaller key sizes, which results in faster computations, lower power consumption, as well as memory and bandwidth savings.

Applications can now use the standard JCA/JCE APIs to access ECC functionality without the dependency on external ECC libraries(via SunPKCS11), as was the case in the JDK 6 release.

The following algorithms are available in the SunEC provider:

Keysize Restrictions

The SunEC provider uses the following default keysizes (in bits) and enforces the following restrictions:

KeyPairGenerator

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