1. Overview
In this quick tutorial, we’ll provide an overview of the differences between a Java keystore and a Java truststore.
2. Concepts
In most cases, we use a keystore and a truststore when our application needs to communicate over SSL/TLS.
Usually, these are password-protected files that sit on the same file system as our running application. The default format used for these files was JKS until Java 8.
Since Java 9, the default keystore format is PKCS12. The biggest difference between JKS and PKCS12 is that JKS is a format specific to Java, while PKCS12 is a standardized and language-neutral way of storing encrypted private keys and certificates.
3. Java KeyStore
A Java keystore stores private key entries, certificates with public keys, or just secret keys that we may use for various cryptographic purposes. It stores each by an alias for ease of lookup.
Generally speaking, keystores hold keys that our application owns, which we can use to prove the integrity of a message and the authenticity of the sender, say by signing payloads.
Usually, we’ll use a keystore when we’re a server and want to use HTTPS. During an SSL handshake, the server looks up the private key from the keystore, and presents its corresponding public key and certificate to the client.
Similarly, if the client also needs to authenticate itself, a situation called mutual authentication, then the client also has a keystore and also presents its public key and certificate.
There’s no default keystore, so if we want to use an encrypted channel, we’ll have to set javax.net.ssl.keyStore and javax.net.ssl.keyStorePassword. If our keystore format is different than the default, we could use javax.net.ssl.keyStoreType to customize it.
Of course, we can use these keys to service other needs as well. Private keys can sign or decrypt data, and public keys can verify or encrypt data. Secret keys can perform these functions as well. A keystore is a place that we can hold onto these keys.
We can also interact with the keystore programmatically.
4. Java TrustStore
A truststore is the opposite. While a keystore typically holds onto certificates that identify us, a truststore holds onto certificates that identify others.
In Java, we use it to trust the third party we’re about to communicate with.
Take our earlier example. If a client talks to a Java-based server over HTTPS, the server will look up the associated key from its keystore and present the public key and certificate to the client.
We, the client, then look up the associated certificate in our truststore. If the certificate or Certificate Authorities presented by the external server isn’t in our truststore, we’ll get an SSLHandshakeException, and the connection won’t be set up successfully.
Java has bundled a truststore called cacerts, and it resides in the $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/security directory.
It contains default, trusted Certificate Authorities:
$ keytool -list -keystore cacerts
Enter keystore password:
Keystore type: JKS
Keystore provider: SUN
Your keystore contains 92 entries
verisignclass2g2ca [jdk], 2018-06-13, trustedCertEntry,
Certificate fingerprint (SHA1): B3:EA:C4:47:76:C9:C8:1C:EA:F2:9D:95:B6:CC:A0:08:1B:67:EC:9D
We can see here that the truststore contains 92 trusted certificate entries and one of the entries is the verisignclass2gca entry. This means that the JVM will automatically trust certificates signed by verisignclass2g2ca.
We can override the default truststore location via the javax.net.ssl.trustStore property. Similarly, we can set javax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword and javax.net.ssl.trustStoreType to specify the truststore’s password and type.
5. Conclusion
In this article, we discussed the main differences between the Java keystore and the Java truststore, along with their purposes.
We also learned how the defaults can be overridden with system properties.
To dive deeper into encrypted communication in Java, we can have a look at the following SSL guide or the JSSE Reference Guide.
