Encryption in Java

Until the Java-XML libraries have built-in encryption, you'll have to use the Java Cryptography Extensions to do any encryption. The JDK already supports digital signatures, and JDK 1.4 supports SSL for secure networking.

Digitally Signing Data

To digitally sign data with Java, you need a Signature object, which you obtain by calling the Signature.getInstance method with the appropriate security algorithm name. The algorithm names for the signing algorithms are actually combinations of secure hashing algorithms and public key encryption algorithms.

The two most common secure hashing algorithms are SHA1 (Secure Hash Algorithm 1) and MD5 (Message Digest 5). The most common public key encryption algorithms are RSA (named for its ...

Get Java™ Web Services Unleashed now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.