UPDATE 2013-03-22: Please check the updated tutorial with GoDaddy and Glassfish V3.1.2 here.
At some stage developing web applications (operating outside you fix lan-wired, “secure” in-house network), your customer will hit you asking “How secure is my data ? Can I access the system via https and get the golden lock ?”. You will quickly answer “No problem ! We use Glassfish” (just because you remember vaguely seeing some https settings in the GF admin tool). It is indeed not that hard to get started but if you are not an security expert and not joggling certificates around, it might take you a while to get your web application running with the golden lock. I will summarize the steps in this tutorial to setup a Glassfish V3 domain running with https. Please feel free to comment and feedback, I am not an security expert either (…yet).
Used for this tutorial:
- Glassfish V3
- Java keytool
- Free 90 days SSL certificate from Comodo (link)
Pre-Requirements:
- A server with an IP address and/or domain (www.somedomain.com). We need to be the owner of the domain (or at least the technical contact, more on that later)
- Basic knowledge of navigating around the Glassfish admin tool
Remarks:
- There are dozens of providers that sell you SSL certificates from 30 to 2000 U$ a year. Companies like Verisign, Thawte and Comodo being the more known ones. I cant give a recommendation nor judge the individual companies.
Find a list of providers here http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Security/Public_Key_Infrastructure/PKIX/Tools_and_Services/Third_Party_Certificate_Authorities - We (as in ‘user’) use security in the web on a daily base (you do online banking, right ?), but trying to understand and appreciate the underlying protocols and technologies throws a steep learning curve at us ! If you want to get started a few helpful links (in case you want to have some clue while talking to a customer):
- I recommend doing this tutorial with a test setup, not a productive environment.
- The tutorial shall help you get running, I do not attempt to explain all the details, you can refer to the links above and dive into any level of details you wish to. There are dozens of options, parameters and settings, this tutorial only attempts to make it running. From there you can experiment with settings, different certificates, etc.
