Java – Mirth: calling an SSL SOAP web service with a client certificate

client-certificatesjavamirthsslweb services

The scenario is around calling an external SSL SOAP web service from within Mirth. The web service is requires an SSL/TLS connection along with a client certificate.

The intention is to use the built-in SOAP Sender Destination to call the remote secure web service, and somehow include that client certificate.

I understand that you first need to install that client certificate into the Java runtime. This may be within the Java runtime's certificate store or the Jetty certstore.

The platform:

  • Windows 2003 SP2
  • Mirth 1.8
  • Java jre1.5.0_09

Question: what configuration steps (Mirth, JRE certificate stores, etc.) would you suggest to successfully have a Mirth SOAP Sender include a client certificate (*.cer) when calling a web service secured by SSL?

Best Answer

The Java runtime, or more specifically, the Sun JSSE provider, will present a client certificate if some system properties are set. You can read details in the JSSE Reference Guide, but the important properties are javax.net.ssl.keyStore and javax.net.ssl.keyStorePassword.

There are a few drawbacks to this approach. First, setting the key store password as a system property makes it accessible to any code running in that process—although this can be controlled if a SecurityManager is installed. Second, these settings will be used for any SSL sockets created through the "default" SSLContext. If you need different credentials for different endpoints, you'll need a Mirth-specific solution.

No starting point was specified in the question, but if starting from scratch, the easiest approach is to create a new Java Key Store ("JKS" format) and generate a new key pair and a CSR. After sending the CSR to the CA and getting a certificate back, import it into the same key store. That key store is ready to use.

If a certificate is already available, it is likely to be in a stored with its corresponding private key in PKCS #12 format (.p12 or .pfx file). These can be used directly by a Java application, but the javax.net.ssl.keyStoreType property will need to be set to "PKCS12"

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