Question

Unable to find valid Certification Path to Requested Target error received when launching tomcat web app via SSL

Asked by: UnityPG

I am trying to quickly implement SSL ability into our existing Apache Tomcat 5.5.23 installation (JDK 1.5.0_12 as base) and have gotten reasonably far but have run into a bit of a wall.

I can navigate to https://www.sslhost.com/webapp/ and get the index page and it shows the proper SSL cert attached, but when I try to launch the application (Electronic Medical Record), I am getting the following error:

Error Sending POST: 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 target

Details
=============================
[SOAPException: faultCode=Error Sending POST: 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 targetURL:

I do not believe it is related directly to the EMR product but instead to perhaps the format of the cert I have from Network Solutions. I am using a PFX file for the keystore since this cert, so my server.xml looks like this:

    <Connector port="443" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192"
               maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75"
               enableLookups="false" disableUploadTimeout="true"
               acceptCount="100" scheme="https" secure="true"
               clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS" keystoreType="PKCS12" keystorePass="password" keystoreFile="C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 5.5\unitypg.pfx" />

I believe the error has to do with the fact that the certificate we received from Network Solutions had 3 other certs along with it: AddTrustExternalCARoot.crt, UTNAddTrustServer_CA.crt and NetworkSolutions_CA.crt.  I ran the following commands to get these chain certs into the cacerts file (which I presume is what the error is complaining about, I'm new to this):

keytool -import -trustcacerts -alias root -file C:\SSLCerts\AddTrustExternalCARoot.crt -keystore "C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_12\jre\lib\security\cacerts"

keytool -import -trustcacerts -alias INTER -file C:\SSLCerts\UTNAddTrustServer_CA.crt -keystore "C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_12\jre\lib\security\cacerts"

where I ran into a problem perhaps is with the third cert&

keytool -import -trustcacerts -alias INTER2 -file C:\SSLCerts\NetworkSolutions_CA.crt -keystore "C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_12\jre\lib\security\cacerts"

No where I could find mentioned three certs. Just a root and an INTER. So what is the extra cert?

Is it right to think this is what is causing my error?

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Asked On
2008-08-28 at 12:42:52ID23686918
Tags

Apache

,

Tomcat

,

5.5.23

,

SSL configuration

,

unable to find valid certification path to requested target

Topic

Apache Tomcat Application Server

Participating Experts
1
Points
250
Comments
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Answers

 

by: sr1xxonPosted on 2008-09-03 at 01:37:34ID: 22375077

in Tomcat, you need to explicitly instanciate the CAcert.

looks like you might have done things backwards. you will need only one CA intermidiate file, I think the last file specified should be ok.

I would start your ssl implementation from scratch.
1. import the CACert
2. impor your end user cert.


also, your server.xml is missing some content

    <Connector port="443" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192"
               maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75"
               enableLookups="false" disableUploadTimeout="true"
               acceptCount="100" scheme="https" secure="true"
               clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS" keystoreType="PKCS12" keystorePass="password" keystoreFile="C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 5.5\unitypg.pfx" />

seems to be missing
truststoreFile="path_to_keystore"

if you're using the java ssl implementation, you need to import your cert (PFX) into your keystore, so you should create your keystore from scratch.

1. Import the Chain Certificate into you keystore
   
 keytool -import -alias root -keystore c:\certs\.keystore \
      -trustcacerts -file c:\certs\networksolutions_CA.crt
 
then import the end user cert (PFX)
   
 keytool -import -alias tomcat -keystore C:\certs\.keystore \
      -trustcacerts -file c:\certs\yourcert.pfx
 
oh.. make sure your CERT password and the keystore passwords are identical, or you can run into further problems.

as a final thing to watch, aliases are case sensitive

hth..

 

by: UnityPGPosted on 2008-09-03 at 05:22:31ID: 22376369

Thanks for the information. Actually what I had ended up working along with one extra step - I had to take that updated cacerts file and place it in the C:\Program Files\Java\jre<version>\lib\security folder for each machine accessing the Java app. So it makes sense that the error reads "unable to find valid certification path". I stumbled across this solution by accident but it works on every machine I try it on now.

Regarding the server.xml, it worked as I had it but I ended up extracting the server key and the cert itself out of the pfx using keytool and then referencing the two files as stated in the apache web server documentation, as I ended up using apache httpd to load balance multiple tomcat instances. When you do that, the SSL connector in the server.xml ends up mirroring the config of the httpd.conf ssl section essentially.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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