Java SSL/TLS ignore expired cert? (java.security.cert.CertPathValidatorException: timestamp check failed)

Question

I am having an issue with a api that I communicate to via SSL. I am thinking the exception is coming due to the fact that the SSL cert has expired. The problem is that I do

Answer 1

I'm not aware of a property that would let you ignore the time validity check on the remote certificate for the default X509TrustManagers, but if you have access to the client code, you can probably configure a different SSLContext with your own X509TrustManager, within which you could catch this exception.

If you want to use something like jSSLutils and its SSLContextFactory, you could write a wrapper along these lines:

PKIXSSLContextFactory sslContextFactory = new PKIXSSLContextFactory();
sslContextFactory.setTrustManagerWrapper(new X509TrustManagerWrapper() {
    @Override
    public X509TrustManager wrapTrustManager(final X509TrustManager origManager) {
        return new X509TrustManager() { 
            @Override
            public X509Certificate[] getAcceptedIssuers() {
                return origManager.getAcceptedIssuers();
            }

            @Override
            public void checkServerTrusted(X509Certificate[] chain,
                                                   String authType)
                    throws CertificateException {
                try {
                    origManager.checkServerTrusted(chain, authType);
                } catch (CertificateExpiredException e) {
                    // TODO log or do something else to rethrow
                                    // the exception if chain[0] isn't the certificate
                                    // for which you want to make this special case.
                }
            }

            @Override
            public void checkClientTrusted(X509Certificate[] chain,
                                                   String authType)
                    throws CertificateException {
                origManager.checkClientTrusted(chain, authType);
            }
        };
    }
});
SSLContext sslContext = sslContextFactory.buildSSLContext();

Making use of this SSLContext then really depends on what uses SSL in your application. In the worst case, you can configure it globally using SSLContext.setDefault(sslContext) with Java 6 and above. Otherwise, some libraries will let you configure an SSLContext.