Securing the Transport Layer

GigaSpaces provides a generic network filter that also provides SSL support, through an SSL communication filter.

GigaSpaces provides two types of communication filter:

• Stream-based filter - for a protocol like ZIP. This type of filter does not support a handshake phase.

• Block-based filter - for encryption network filters. These filters do support a handshake phase.

Usage

The way to load and enable the communication filter, is by setting the system property com.gs.lrmi.filter.factory. The value should be the communication filter factory class name.

For example, to use an SSL communication filter, run GigaSpaces with:

-Dcom.gs.lrmi.filter.factory=com.gigaspaces.lrmi.nio.filters.SSLFilterFactory

Default SSLFilterFactory

Since some types of communication filters are not symmetric regarding the client and server, the class SSLFilterFactory has 2 methods: one to create the communication filter for the client side, and the other for the server side.

• public IOFilter createClientFilter() throws Exception;

• public IOFilter createServerFilter() throws Exception;

If the communication filter needs its own parameters, it can acquire them by directly reading system properties. For example, the supplied SSLFilter needs to get the keystore file, and the password to this file.

It uses the following system properties to get them:

-Dcom.gs.lrmi.filter.security.keystore=keystore.ks
-Dcom.gs.lrmi.filter.security.password=password

The key store file is loaded from somewhere in the classpath.

The provided SSLFilter uses key store type JKS A Java keystore (JKS) file is a secure file format used to hold certificate information for Java applications., with key management method SunX509.

Code snippet of the space server.

public class SSLServer {
    public static void main(String [] args) throws Exception{
        EmbeddedSpaceConfigurer configurer = new EmbeddedSpaceConfigurer("SSLSpace").
                lookupGroups("ssl_example_group");
        GigaSpace gigaSpace = new GigaSpaceConfigurer(configurer).gigaSpace();
    }
}

Code snippet of the space client.

public class SSLClient {
    public static void main(String [] args) throws Exception{
        UrlSpaceConfigurer configurer =
                  new UrlSpaceConfigurer("jini://localhost/*/SSLSpace).
                  lookupGroups("ssl_example_group");
        GigaSpace remoteSpace = new GigaSpaceConfigurer(configurer).gigaSpace();

        AnEntry entry = new AnEntry();
        entry.key = "first";
        entry.payload = "first value";
        remoteSpace.write(entry);
        AnEntry value = remoteSpace.read(new AnEntry());
        System.out.println(value.payload);
    }

    public static class AnEntry implements Entry{
        private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

        public AnEntry() {
        }
        public String key;
        public String payload;
    }
}

As you can see, until now there is nothing special in the code – it is the same code as if the SSL was not used. However, when you wish to run this code with SSL encryption, you should run it with the following system properties (both server and client), and have the keystore anywhere in the classpath (both server and client).

-Dcom.gs.lrmi.filter.factory=com.gigaspaces.lrmi.nio.filters.SSLFilterFactory
-Dcom.gs.lrmi.filter.security.keystore=keystore.ks
-Dcom.gs.lrmi.filter.security.password=password

Alternatively if you do not need authentication and just wish to encrypt the data you can omit the key store and the password and the server will generate the SSL keys on the fly.

-Dcom.gs.lrmi.filter.factory=com.gigaspaces.lrmi.nio.filters.SSLFilterFactory

Choosing the Encryption Protocol

Support for TLS Transport Layer Security, or TLS, is a widely adopted security protocol designed to facilitate privacy and data security for communications over the Internet. A primary use case of TLS is encrypting the communication between web applications and servers. 1.3 was added in Java 11. This is also true for Java 8 version 8u261 +.

The indication that SSL is used is the message:

Communication Filters Information:
    CommunicationFilterFactory: com.gigaspaces.lrmi.nio.filters.SSLFilterFactory