FULL PRODUCT VERSION :


A DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM :
Recently the JSSE certificate validation has started to fail for certificate chains advertised by well known sites, namely https://mail.yahoo.com and https://foursquare.com.
Here is the exception stack trace:
sun.security.validator.ValidatorException: Violated path length constraints
at sun.security.validator.SimpleValidator.checkBasicConstraints(SimpleValidator.java:262)
at sun.security.validator.SimpleValidator.checkExtensions(SimpleValidator.java:169)
at sun.security.validator.SimpleValidator.engineValidate(SimpleValidator.java:154)
at sun.security.validator.Validator.validate(Validator.java:218)
at com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.X509TrustManagerImpl.validate(X509TrustManagerImpl.java:126)
at com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.X509TrustManagerImpl.checkServerTrusted(X509TrustManagerImpl.java:209)

I've inspected the certificate chains, and in all cases, the basic constraint has a valid value.
Is there a known bug in JSSE that does not handle basic constraint properly?

I've reviewed the online version of source code for [SimpleValidator|http://www.java2s.com/Open-Source/Java-Document/6.0-JDK-Modules-sun/security/sun/security/validator/SimpleValidator.java.htm] however that version seems to be not consistent with latest JRE 6 update (30).

The validation error can be consistently reproduced with the following code snippet:

<code>
X509Certificate[] chain = ... ; // server certificate chain
String authType = ...; // the authentication type used by certificate chain
// The attached example uses "RSA"

TrustManagerFactory tmf = TrustManagerFactory.getInstance( "SunX509", "SunJSSE" );
tmf.init( (KeyStore) null );
TrustManager[] tms = tmf.getTrustManagers();
for( TrustManager tm : tms ) {
if( tm instanceof X509TrustManager ) {
( (X509TrustManager) tm ).checkServerTrusted( chain, authType );
}
</code>


For convenience, I'm including the PEM certificate chain that failed verification and the code to load that chain into JSSE:

=============================================

<code>
String certFilePath = ... ; // a path to a PEM encoded certificate chain

InputStream fis = new FileInputStream( new File( certFilePath ) );
CertificateFactory cf = CertificateFactory.getInstance( "X.509" );
Collection< ? extends Certificate > certChain = cf.generateCertificates( fis );

X509Certificate[] chain = new X509Certificate[ certChain.size() ];
int i = 0;
for( Certificate cert : certChain ) {
chain[ i++ ] = (X509Certificate) cert;
}
</code>

============================
Certificate chain from https://mail.yahoo.com
============================

<file>
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIGOzCCBSOgAwIBAgIQD1hJQVLDNUtt6+cgnnJuZzANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQUFADBm
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fPjh72mmPGC70nR7ikji
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIGVTCCBT2gAwIBAgIQCFH5WYFBRcq94CTiEsnCDjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQUFADBs
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-----END CERTIFICATE-----
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIETzCCA7igAwIBAgIEBydYPTANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQUFADB1MQswCQYDVQQGEwJV
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-----END CERTIFICATE-----
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
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-----END CERTIFICATE-----
</file>




STEPS TO FOLLOW TO REPRODUCE THE PROBLEM :
The validation error can be consistently reproduced with the following code snippet:

<code>
X509Certificate[] chain = ... ; // server certificate chain
String authType = ...; // the authentication type used by certificate chain
// The attached example uses "RSA"

TrustManagerFactory tmf = TrustManagerFactory.getInstance( "SunX509", "SunJSSE" );
tmf.init( (KeyStore) null );
TrustManager[] tms = tmf.getTrustManagers();
for( TrustManager tm : tms ) {
if( tm instanceof X509TrustManager ) {
( (X509TrustManager) tm ).checkServerTrusted( chain, authType );
}
</code>


REPRODUCIBILITY :
This bug can be reproduced always.

---------- BEGIN SOURCE ----------
The validation error can be consistently reproduced with the following code snippet:

<code>
X509Certificate[] chain = ... ; // server certificate chain
String authType = ...; // the authentication type used by certificate chain
// The attached example uses "RSA"

TrustManagerFactory tmf = TrustManagerFactory.getInstance( "SunX509", "SunJSSE" );
tmf.init( (KeyStore) null );
TrustManager[] tms = tmf.getTrustManagers();
for( TrustManager tm : tms ) {
if( tm instanceof X509TrustManager ) {
( (X509TrustManager) tm ).checkServerTrusted( chain, authType );
}
</code>
---------- END SOURCE ----------