Using OCSP with TLS in Apache CXF

The previous article showed how to enable OCSP for WS-Security based SOAP services in Apache CXF, by checking the revocation status of a certificate used for X.509 digital signature. The article stated that OCSP is supported in Apache CXF when TLS is used to secure communication between a web service client and server, but didn't give any further information. In this post we will show how to enable OCSP when using TLS for both a web service (JAX-WS or JAX-RS) client and server.

The test-code is available on github here (also contains WS-Security OCSP tests):

• cxf-ocsp: This project contains a number of tests that show how a CXF service can validate client certificates using OCSP.

1) Enabling OCSP for web service clients

First we'll look at enabling OCSP for web service clients. The TLSOCSPTest shows how this can be done. Two Java security properties are set in the test-code to enable OCSP: 

• "ocsp.responderURL": The URL of the OCSP service
• "ocsp.enable": "true" to enable OCSP

The first property is required if the service certificate does not contain the URL of the OCSP service in a certificate extension. Before running the test, install openssl and run the following command from the "openssl" directory included in the project (use the passphrase "security"):

• openssl ocsp -index ca.db.index -port 12345 -text -rkey wss40CAKey.pem -CA wss40CA.pem -rsigner wss40CA.pem

Two options are available to get OCSP working for a web service client. The first is to configure TLS in code as shown in the first test contained in TLSOCSPTest. A PKIXBuilderParameters instance is created with the truststore and revocation is explicitly "enabled" on it. This is then wrapped in a CertPathTrustManagerParameters and used to initialise the TrustManagerFactory. 

The second test shows a new and alternative way of enabling OCSP if you want to configure your TLS keys in spring. This feature is only available from CXF 3.1.11 onwards.  The spring configuration file for the client contains a tlsClientParameters Element with the attribute "enableRevocation="true"". Once the "ocsp.enable" security property is set, then this will enable revocation checking on the certificate presented by the server during the TLS handshake.

2) Enabling OCSP for web service servers

We also show via the TLSOCSPClientAuthTest how to enable OCSP for web service servers that use CXF's Jetty transport. Openssl should be started as per the client tests. The server requires client authentication and then uses OCSP to verify the revocation status of the certificate presented by the client during the TLS handshake. The TLS configuration for the server is done in code. However it can also be done in spring using the "enableRevocation" attribute as per the client above.