Odds and Ends: Creating a new X.509 Certificate

We've been busy integrating new ASN.1 code into our PDF API in preparation for a new release later this week, and one of the areas of code we needed was a way to create a new self-signed X.509 Certificate.

Java has a huge number of packages and classes related to security, X.509 and the like, including the X509Certificate class. However, code to create a new self-signed X.509 Certificate in Java is conspicuously absent, even though this functionality is available in the Java keytool application.

So without further ado, here's what we think is the simplest way to do it. This involves a call into the undocumented sun.security.x509 package used by keytool: so it's public and not likely to go away soon.

import sun.security.x509.*;
import java.security.cert.*;
import java.security.*;
import java.math.BigInteger;
import java.util.Date;
import java.io.IOException

/** 
 * Create a self-signed X.509 Certificate
 * @param dn the X.509 Distinguished Name, eg "CN=Test, L=London, C=GB"
 * @param pair the KeyPair
 * @param days how many days from now the Certificate is valid for
 * @param algorithm the signing algorithm, eg "SHA1withRSA"
 */  
X509Certificate generateCertificate(String dn, KeyPair pair, int days, String algorithm)
  throws GeneralSecurityException, IOException
{
  PrivateKey privkey = pair.getPrivate();
  X509CertInfo info = new X509CertInfo();
  Date from = new Date();
  Date to = new Date(from.getTime() + days * 86400000l);
  CertificateValidity interval = new CertificateValidity(from, to);
  BigInteger sn = new BigInteger(64, new SecureRandom());
  X500Name owner = new X500Name(dn);

  info.set(X509CertInfo.VALIDITY, interval);
  info.set(X509CertInfo.SERIAL_NUMBER, new CertificateSerialNumber(sn));
  info.set(X509CertInfo.SUBJECT, new CertificateSubjectName(owner));
  info.set(X509CertInfo.ISSUER, new CertificateIssuerName(owner));
  info.set(X509CertInfo.KEY, new CertificateX509Key(pair.getPublic()));
  info.set(X509CertInfo.VERSION, new CertificateVersion(CertificateVersion.V3));
  AlgorithmId algo = new AlgorithmId(AlgorithmId.md5WithRSAEncryption_oid);
  info.set(X509CertInfo.ALGORITHM_ID, new CertificateAlgorithmId(algo));

  // Sign the cert to identify the algorithm that's used.
  X509CertImpl cert = new X509CertImpl(info);
  cert.sign(privkey, algorithm);

  // Update the algorith, and resign.
  algo = (AlgorithmId)cert.get(X509CertImpl.SIG_ALG);
  info.set(CertificateAlgorithmId.NAME + "." + CertificateAlgorithmId.ALGORITHM, algo);
  cert = new X509CertImpl(info);
  cert.sign(privkey, algorithm);
  return cert;
}