Connecting to a SSL SMTP Server using Spring/Java

One of the toughest things I did for a long time :
I needed to connect to a SMTP Mail Server using an SSL connection.
When doing this using my SMTP GMail Server, all it took were a few lines :

public class SslMailServerCheckerGmail {

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

JavaMailSenderImpl mailSender = new JavaMailSenderImpl();

Properties mailProps = new Properties();
mailProps.put("mail.smtps.auth", "true");
mailProps.put("mail.smtp.starttls.enable", "true");
mailSender.setJavaMailProperties(mailProps);

mailSender.setProtocol("smtps");
mailSender.setPort(465);
mailSender.setHost("smtp.gmail.com");
mailSender.setUsername("my.email@gmail.com");
mailSender.setPassword("mypassword");

MimeMessage mimeMessage = mailSender.createMimeMessage();
MimeMessageHelper helper = new MimeMessageHelper(mimeMessage, true);

helper.setTo("softwarre@hotmail.com");
helper.setFrom("my.email@gmail.com");
helper
.setSubject("If you can see this message in your mailbox, your code worked");

helper.setText("See subject", true);

mailSender.send(mimeMessage);

}
}


However, when trying this for another SSL SMTP Server, I kept having the error :

javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: sun.security.validator.ValidatorException: PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target


The solution to this problem was to obtain the public key from the SMTP Server and make your Java client trust this key. Use the command

smtps.kuleuven.be:443

to grab the public certificate of the smtps server. Copy the certificate (including begin and end lines) into a file, for example call it

kuleuven.pem

. Then, import this certificate into your java keystore by using the command

keytool -import -alias smtps.kuleuven.be -keystore "C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_02\jre\lib\security\cacerts" -file kuleuven.pem

. The default keystore password is

changeit

. Press yes to accept the certificate.

Small tip on the solution : If you use "C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_02\jre\lib\security\cacerts" as your -keystore file, you will even not have to set the -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore VM parameter, it will find the keystore file automagically.

Jasypt : encryption with great support for Hibernate and Spring

For my petproject, I was in the need of encrypting a few database columns. There is of course the full-fledged solution of Acegi Spring Security, but since I only needed encryption of a few database columns, I decided to go for Jasypt.

Using the following tutorial, I easily integrated Jasypt with my existing Spring/Hibernate/Echo2 stack. The only problem I encountered was a JCE problem, since I hadn't installed the unlimited
strength policy files in the jre/lib/security directory. Since unlimited strength, was not what I needed anyway, I switched the algorithm PBEWithMD5AndTripleDES to PBEWithMD5AndDES and my transparantly encrypted database columns were a fact.

The only drawback I encountered was the dependency of Jasypt on the external library International Components for Unicode (ICU), which is over 4 megabyte. However, despite this fact, Jasypt is a great library, which gets you up to speed really fast.