[DERBY-2803] SSL certificate authentication succeeds unexpectedly

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 10.3.1.4
• Fix Version/s: 10.3.1.4, 10.4.1.3
• Component/s: Documentation
• Bug behavior facts: Security
• Assignee: Bernt Johnsen
• Reporter: Richard N. Hillegas
• Created: 11/Jun/07 19:49
• Updated: 29/Apr/10 14:56
• Resolved: 27/Jun/07 07:24

Description

The following bug report may simply be pilot error. I confess that I am having a hard time understanding the user documentation for this feature. The user documentation is found in the Derby Admin guide in the section titled "SSL/TLS". My confusion arises from the fact that sometimes the documentation talks about 3 SSL states (none, basic, peer) and sometimes the documentation talks about 4 SSL states (none, basic, client certificate, server certificate).

I tried running an experiment in which the server was setup for "Basic SSL encryption":

1) I successfully connected to the server when the client was setup for "Basic SSL encryption". This I expected so good.

2) I also successfully connected to the server when the client was setup for "peer (server) authentication". This confused me because the client url was requesting peer authentication but the server was booted with just basic ssl authentication. That is, the client url requested "ssl=peerAuthentication" but the server startup line requested "ssl=basic". I was surprised that the two sides of the connection didn't have to agree on how much authentication was going to be done.

3) I also successfully connected to the server when the client was setup for "peer authentication on both sides". This really confused me: It seemed to me that there were 2 certificates involved, but the server, via its startup properties, should only have been aware of one of these certificates, viz., the certificate identified by the javax.net.ssl.keyStore properties.