Java and security bits

Crypto Code and OpenJDK

I just got a question about the status of the crypto code in OpenJDK that referred to the limitations mentioned in my blog post from last May. Back then some of the encryption code was not open source as we were working through some build and export control issues. Let me give a quick update on that: Brad spent quite a bit of time on this and eventually those issues were resolved, as announced in a message to the mailing lists. That means all the crypto code is available on OpenJDK now. There are a couple of checks (relating to signed providers) which are present in Sun's binaries but that are not present in OpenJDK, but that is simply because those checks are neither needed nor particularly appropriate for an open source project. Everything else is exactly the same as in Sun's releases.

Bottom line is that you can modify and build your own versions of the crypto framework and the crypto providers now. Have at it!

Posted at 18:08 Jan 15, 2008 by Andreas Sterbenz in Java  |