X509Cert

Construct a uninitialized X509 Cert on which decode must later be called (or which may be deserialized).

Unmarshals a certificate from its encoded form, parsing the encoded bytes. This form of constructor is used by agents which need to examine and use certificate contents. That is, this is one of the more commonly used constructors. Note that the buffer must include only a certificate, and no "garbage" may be left at the end. If you need to ignore data at the end of a certificate, use another constructor.

Unmarshals a certificate from its encoded form, parsing the encoded bytes. This form of constructor is used by agents which need to examine and use certificate contents. That is, this is one of the most commonly used constructors.

Unmarshal a certificate from its encoded form, parsing a DER value. This form of constructor is used by agents which need to examine and use certificate contents.

Partially constructs a certificate from descriptive parameters. This constructor may be used by Certificate Authority (CA) code, which later signs and encodes the certificate. Also, self-signed certificates serve as CA certificates, and are sometimes used as certificate requests.

Until the certificate has been signed and encoded, some of the mandatory fields in the certificate will not be available via accessor functions: the serial number, issuer name and signing algorithm, and of course the signed certificate. The fields passed to this constructor are available, and must be non-null.

Note that the public key being signed is generally independent of the signature algorithm being used. So for example Diffie-Hellman keys (which do not support signatures) can be placed in X.509 certificates when some other signature algorithm (e.g. DSS/DSA, or one of the RSA based algorithms) is used.

Decode an X.509 certificate from an input stream.

Appends the certificate to an output stream.

Creates an X.509 certificate, and signs it using the issuer passed (associating a signature algorithm and an X.500 name). This operation is used to implement the certificate generation functionality of a certificate authority.

Compares two certificates. This is false if the certificates are not both X.509 certs, otherwise it compares them as binary data.

Compares two certificates, returning false if any data differs between the two.

Returns the "X.509" format identifier.

Returns getIssuerName

Returns the algorithm used by the issuer to sign the certificate. Null is returned in the case of a partially constructed cert.

Returns the certificate issuer's X.500 distinguished name. Null is returned in the case of a partially constructed cert.

Returns the last time the certificate is valid.

Returns the first time the certificate is valid.

Returns getSubjectName

Returns the subject's public key. Note that some public key algorithms support an optional certificate generation policy where the keys in the certificates are not in themselves sufficient to perform a public key operation. Those keys need to be augmented by algorithm parameters, which the certificate generation policy chose not to place in the certificate.

Two such public key algorithms are: DSS/DSA, where algorithm parameters could be acquired from a CA certificate in the chain of issuers; and Diffie-Hellman, with a similar solution although the CA then needs both a Diffie-Hellman certificate and a signature capable certificate.

Returns the certificate's serial number. Null is returned in the case of a partially constructed cert.

Return the signed X.509 certificate as a byte array. The bytes are in standard DER marshaled form. Null is returned in the case of a partially constructed cert.

Returns an X500Signer that may be used to create signatures. Those signature may in turn be verified using this certificate (or a copy of it).

NOTE: If the private key is by itself capable of creating signatures, this fact may not be recognized at this time. Specifically, the case of DSS/DSA keys which get their algorithm parameters from higher in the certificate chain is not supportable without using an X509CertChain API, and there is no current support for other sources of algorithm parameters.

Returns the subject's X.500 distinguished name.

Returns a signature object that may be used to verify signatures created using a specified signature algorithm and the public key contained in this certificate.

NOTE: If the public key in this certificate is not by itself capable of verifying signatures, this may not be recognized at this time. Specifically, the case of DSS/DSA keys which get their algorithm parameters from higher in the certificate chain is not supportable without using an X509CertChain API, and there is no current support for other sources of algorithm parameters.

Returns the X.509 version number of this certificate, zero based. That is, "2" indicates an X.509 version 3 (1993) certificate, and "0" indicates X.509v1 (1988). Zero is returned in the case of a partially constructed cert.

Calculates a hash code value for the object. Objects which are equal will also have the same hashcode.

Returns a printable representation of the certificate.

Returns a printable representation of the certificate. This does not contain all the information available to distinguish this from any other certificate. The certificate must be fully constructed before this function may be called; in particular, if you are creating certificates you must call encodeAndSign() before calling this function.

Throws an exception if the certificate is invalid because it is now outside of the certificate's validity period, or because it was not signed using the verification key provided. Successfully verifying a certificate does not indicate that one should trust the entity which it represents.

Note that since this class represents only a single X.509 certificate, it cannot know anything about the certificate chain which is used to provide the verification key and to establish trust. Other code must manage and use those cert chains.

For now, you must walk the cert chain being used to verify any given cert. Start at the root, which is a self-signed certificate; verify it using the key inside the certificate. Then use that to verify the next certificate in the chain, issued by that CA. In this manner, verify each certificate until you reach the particular certificate you wish to verify. You should not use a certificate if any of the verification operations for its certificate chain were unsuccessful.