Creating a KeyStore in PKCS12 Format

This section explains how to create a PKCS12 KeyStore to work with JSSE. In a real working environment, a customer could already have an existing private key and certificate (signed by a known CA). In this case, JKS format cannot be used, because it does not allow the user to import/export the private key through keytool. It is necessary to generate a PKCS12 database consisting of the private key and its certificate.

The generated PKCS12 database can then be used as the Adapter’s KeyStore. The keytool utility is currently lacking the ability to write to a PKCS12 database. However, it can read from a PKCS12 database.

There are additional third-party tools available for generating PKCS12 certificates, if you want to use a different tool.

For the following example, openssl is used to generate the PKCS12 KeyStore:

cat mykey.pem.txt mycertificate.pem.txt>mykeycertificate.pem.txt

The existing key is in the file mykey.pem.txt in PEM format. The certificate is in mycertificate.pem.txt, which is also in PEM format. A text file must be created which contains the key followed by the certificate as follows:

openssl pkcs12 -export -in mykeycertificate.pem.txt -out mykeystore.pkcs12 
-name myAlias -noiter -nomaciter

This command prompts the user for a password. The password is required. The KeyStore fails to work with JSSE without a password. This password must also be supplied as the password for the Adapter’s KeyStore password.

This command also uses the openssl pkcs12 command to generate a PKCS12 KeyStore with the private key and certificate. The generated KeyStore is mykeystore.pkcs12 with an entry specified by the myAlias alias. This entry contains the private key and the certificate provided by the -in argument. The noiter and nomaciter options must be specified to allow the generated KeyStore to be recognized properly by JSSE.