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 V6.0.x and later applications. The information in this article supports V5.x applications only that are used with WebSphere Application Server V6.0.x and later. The information does not apply to V6.0.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, it is recommended 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 Web services 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 console or by scripting.

---

 

Related concepts

Collection certificate store

 

Related tasks

Configure trust anchors using an assembly tool
Configure trust anchors using the console
Securing Web services for V5.x applications using XML digital signature