J2EE™ Security for Servlets, EJBs and Web Services: Applying Theory and Standards to Practice

Summary

Java cryptographic services are defined independent of the underlying algorithms and implementations. This supports extensibility through the addition of newer algorithms in separate provider implementation without changing or adding the programmer visible classes. This extensibility is achieved through an architecture where the service engine classes expose the functionality, but hide the coupling with the implementation class. It also allows security capabilities to be extended by installing and configuring third-party providers. The same architecture is used by all security APIs, bringing a good deal of uniformity and ease of use.

Keys—secret key for symmetric encryption, and public-private key pairs for asymmetric encryption—are central ...