How to ignore PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException?

Question

I got the following exception when try to post a request to a http server:

Here is the code I used

URL url = new URL(
        \"https://www.abc.com\"         


        

Answer 1

If the issue is a missing intermediate certificate, you can enable Oracle JRE to automatically download the missing intermediate certificate as explained in this answer.

Just set the Java system property -Dcom.sun.security.enableAIAcaIssuers=true

For this to work the server's certificate must provide the URI to the intermediate certificate (the certificate's issuer). As far as I can tell, this is what browsers do as well and should be just as secure - I'm not a security expert though.

Edit: If I recall correctly, this seems to work at least with Java 8 and is documented here for Java 9.

Answer 2

I have used the below code to override the SSL checking in my project and it worked for me.

package com.beingjavaguys.testftp;

import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.Reader;
import java.net.URL;
import java.net.URLConnection;

import javax.net.ssl.HostnameVerifier;
import javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection;
import javax.net.ssl.SSLContext;
import javax.net.ssl.SSLSession;
import javax.net.ssl.TrustManager;
import javax.net.ssl.X509TrustManager;
import java.security.cert.X509Certificate;

/**
 * Fix for Exception in thread "main" 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
 */
public class ConnectToHttpsUrl {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        /* Start of Fix */
        TrustManager[] trustAllCerts = new TrustManager[] { new X509TrustManager() {
            public java.security.cert.X509Certificate[] getAcceptedIssuers() { return null; }
            public void checkClientTrusted(X509Certificate[] certs, String authType) { }
            public void checkServerTrusted(X509Certificate[] certs, String authType) { }

        } };

        SSLContext sc = SSLContext.getInstance("SSL");
        sc.init(null, trustAllCerts, new java.security.SecureRandom());
        HttpsURLConnection.setDefaultSSLSocketFactory(sc.getSocketFactory());

        // Create all-trusting host name verifier
        HostnameVerifier allHostsValid = new HostnameVerifier() {
            public boolean verify(String hostname, SSLSession session) { return true; }
        };
        // Install the all-trusting host verifier
        HttpsURLConnection.setDefaultHostnameVerifier(allHostsValid);
        /* End of the fix*/

        URL url = new URL("https://nameofthesecuredurl.com");
        URLConnection con = url.openConnection();
        Reader reader = new InputStreamReader(con.getInputStream());
        while (true) {
            int ch = reader.read();
            if (ch == -1) 
                break;
            System.out.print((char) ch);
        }
    }
}