[CASSANDRA-16666] Make SSLContext creation pluggable/extensible

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Normal
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 4.1-alpha1, 4.1
• Component/s: Messaging/Internode
• Change Category: Operability
• Complexity: Normal
• Platform: All

Source Control Link

https://github.com/apache/cassandra/commit/24dcc280c2e442eea27e7129c4c948eb6199ed91

Test and Documentation Plan

https://github.com/apache/cassandra/pull/1243

• Assignee: Maulin Vasavada
• Reporter: Maulin Vasavada

Authors

Maulin Vasavada

Reviewers

Berenguer Blasi, Jon Meredith, Stefan Miklosovic

• Created: 12/May/21 23:55
• Updated: 27/May/22 19:25
• Resolved: 04/Oct/21 07:17

Description

Currently Cassandra creates the SSLContext via SSLFactory.java. SSLFactory is a final class with static methods and not overridable. The SSLFactory loads the keys and certs from the file based artifacts for the same. While this works for many, in the industry where security is stricter and contextual, this approach falls short. Many big organizations need flexibility to load the SSL artifacts from a custom resource (like custom Key Management Solution, HashiCorp Vault, Amazon KMS etc). While JSSE SecurityProvider architecture allows us flexibility to build our custom mechanisms to validate and process security artifacts, many times all we need is to build upon Java's existing extensibility that Trust/Key Manager interfaces provide to load keystores from various resources in the absence of any customized requirements on the Keys/Certificate formats.

My proposal here is to make the SSLContext creation pluggable/extensible and have the current SSLFactory.java implement an extensible interface. 

I contributed a similar change that is live now in Apache Kafka (2.6.0) - https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/KAFKA-8890 

I can spare some time writing the pluggable interface and run by the required reviewers.

 

Created CEP-9: Make SSLContext creation pluggable 

 

cc: dcapwell djoshi

Issue Links

• is depended upon by: CASSANDRA-16719 Allow for transitioning from using one SSLContextFactory implementation to another
• Parent Feature: CASSANDRA-16950 Documentation for: CEP-9 Make SSLContext creation pluggable