Trust anchors

A trust anchor specifies keystores that contain trusted root certificates that validate the signer certificate. The request receiver and the response receiver use these keystores to validate the signer certificate of the digital signature.

There is an important distinction between V5.x and Version 6.0.x and later applications. The information in this article supports V5.x applications only that are used with WAS V6.0.x and later. The information does not apply to V 6.0.x and later applications.

The request receiver (as defined in the ibm-webservices-bnd.xmi file) and the response receiver (as defined in the ibm-webservicesclient-bnd.xmi file when Web services is acting as client) use these keystores to validate the signer certificate of the digital signature. The keystores are critical to the integrity of the digital signature validation. If the keysores are tampered with, the result of the digital signature verification is doubtful and comprised. Therefore, IBM recommends that you secure these keystores. The binding configuration specified for the request receiver in the ibm-webservices-bnd.xmi file must match the binding configuration for the response receiver in the ibm-webservicesclient-bnd.xmi file.

The trust anchor is defined as javax.security.cert.TrustAnchor in the Java CertPath API. The Java CertPath API uses the trust anchor and the certificate store to validate the incoming X.509 certificate that is embedded in the SOAP message.

The WS-Security implementation in WAS supports this trust anchor. In WAS, the trust anchor is represented as a Java keystore object. The type, path, and password of the keystore are passed to the implementation through the admin console or by scripting.

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Related concepts

Collection certificate store

 

Related tasks

Set trust anchors using an assembly tool
Set trust anchors
Secure Web services for V5.x applications using XML digital signature