OpenSSL4J JNI Java Library

OpenSSL4J is a Java bridge to the native OpenSSL library. On the Java side you're using the conventional MessageDigest class, but calls in the background the native OpenSSL library with all its optimizations for performance reasons.

Building OpenSSL4J

For building the application you need

• JDK 9+,
• Apache Maven,
• GNU Make,
• GNU GCC,
• OpenSSL development headers

To build the C library, execute:

$ make

to put the build C library to the place for inclusion in the target JAR, execute:

$ make install

To build the Java package, execute:

$ mvn clean package

Features

• Performance: The main feature of OpenSSL4J is performance: The MD5-implementation of OpenSSL4J is typically 67% to 102% faster than the pure Java version from SUN.
• Functionality: There are some algorithms available in OpenSSL4J that are not available in the normal SUN crypto provider.

Restrictions

• MessageDigest restriction: The current milestone only contains MessageDigest algorithms.
• Restricted platforms: The code uses dynamic linking to an object library on the machine. Native object code within the JAR file is used for binding the Java code to the native code. There is a restricted amount of platforms supported (see below).

Usage

Dynamic security provider configuration

The following example show how to create a MD5 message digest instance with the dynamically chosen security Provider:

import de.sfuhrm.openssl4j.OpenSSL4JProvider;

...

MessageDigest messageDigest = MessageDigest.getInstance("MD5", new OpenSSL4JProvider());
messageDigest.update("hello world!".getBytes(Charset.forName("ASCII")));
byte[] digest = messageDigest.digest():

Installing it in the JDK

You can also install the provider in your JDK installation. Open the java.security file in an editor:

• Linux, or macOS: <java-home>/conf/security/java.security
• Windows: <java-home>\conf\security\java.security

To be used effectively, insert it in front of the SUN provider. If this is how the original file looks:

security.provider.1=SUN
security.provider.2=SunRsaSign
security.provider.3=SunEC
security.provider.4=SunJSSE
security.provider.5=SunJCE
security.provider.6=SunJGSS
security.provider.7=SunSASL
security.provider.8=XMLDSig
security.provider.9=SunPCSC
...

then the new file could look like this after inserting and renumbering the entries:

security.provider.1=OpenSSL4J
security.provider.2=SUN
security.provider.3=SunRsaSign
security.provider.4=SunEC
security.provider.5=SunJSSE
security.provider.6=SunJCE
security.provider.7=SunJGSS
security.provider.8=SunSASL
security.provider.9=XMLDSig
security.provider.10=SunPCSC
...

Including it with Maven

The recommended way of including the library into your project is using maven:

<dependency>
    <groupId>de.sfuhrm</groupId>
    <artifactId>openssl4j</artifactId>
    <version>0.2.0</version>
</dependency>

There are the following native implementations available inside the JAR file:

• Linux-aarch64
• Linux-ppc64le
• Linux-s390x
• Linux-amd64
• Linux-arm

Version notice

Please note that the current version is experimental.

Versions

The version numbers comply to the semantic versioning schema. Especially major version changes come with breaking API changes.

Author

Written 2020 by Stephan Fuhrmann. You can reach me via email to s (at) sfuhrm.de

License

The project is licensed under LGPL 3.0.