5 minutes or less: User/Role API and SSL

This short post follows up Couple of things you need to know about the User/Role API. Now imagine that your LDAP identity provider is SSL enabled in 1-way mode (the server authenticates to the client, but the client does not authenticate to the server).

Now you need to tell Weblogic server how to validate the LDAP server certificate. And this is accomplished by adding the LDAP server CA certificate to the configured Weblogic trust store. If we’re talking about a self-signed certificate, simply add the certificate itself to the trust store. And there are a couple of options for the trust key store: Command Line, Custom Trust, Java Standard Trust or the OOTB Demo Trust. So far, so good. By adding the certificate to one of these options, Weblogic is all good to talk to the identity provider in SSL mode.

However, the User/Role API is not directly tied to Weblogic, so don’t expect it to take whatever is configured for the server. By default, as a standard Java-based client, the User/Role API looks for the standard Java $JDK_HOME/jre/lib/security/cacerts file, unless you tell it to look elsewhere, by informing the java system properties

javax.net.ssl.trustStore=<path_to_trust_store_file>
javax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword=<trust_store_password>

Relying on the original cacerts file may be dangerous in case you upgrade your JDK. If you need to leverage the existing certificates there, make a copy of the file and use the copy. Then simply tell the User/Role API where to read it from using the properties mentioned above.