Configuring Tomcat to accept Estonian ID card

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In order to accept Estonian ID card, Tomcat needs to be configured to accept client side certificates. But before that, SSL needs to be configured.

Setting up client side authentication

First you need all SK’s root certificates.

SK (Certification Centre, legal name AS Sertifitseerimiskeskus) is Estonia’s primary and currently the only certification authority (CA), providing certificates for authentication and digital signing to national identity documents (ID-card, residence permit, Digi-ID, Mobiil-ID).

$ wget http://www.sk.ee/crls/esteid/esteid2007.crl
$ wget http://www.sk.ee/crls/juur/crl.crl
$ wget http://www.sk.ee/crls/eeccrca/eeccrca.crl
$ wget http://www.sk.ee/repository/crls/esteid2011.crl

Add these certificates to your keystore.

$JAVA_HOME/bin/keytool -importcert -file "/path/to/certs/EECCRCA.pem.cer" -alias eeccrca
$JAVA_HOME/bin/keytool -importcert -file "/path/to/certs/ESTEID-SK 2007.PEM.cer" -alias esteid2007
$JAVA_HOME/bin/keytool -importcert -file "/path/to/certs/ESTEID-SK 2011.pem.cer" -alias esteid2011
$JAVA_HOME/bin/keytool -importcert -file "/path/to/certs/JUUR-SK.PEM.cer" -alias juur

For each import, you will be asked for the keystore password and your confirmation on whether you trust this certificate or not.

Modify your SSL connector element in the server.xml file.

<Connector port="8443" protocol="HTTP/1.1" SSLEnabled="true"
               maxThreads="150" scheme="https" secure="true"
               clientAuth="true" sslProtocol="TLS"
               keystoreFile="/path/to/.keystore" keystorePass="changeit"
               truststoreFile="/path/to/.keystore"
               truststorePass="changeit" />

You need to change clientAuth to true and set the truststoreFile path and password. That’s all for Tomcat configuration. Now you need to enable client side authentication from your applicaiton. The following is a sample web.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
           xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
           xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee
                  http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"
           version="3.0">

  <security-constraint>
    <web-resource-collection>
      <web-resource-name>Everything</web-resource-name>
      <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </web-resource-collection>
    <user-data-constraint>
      <transport-guarantee>CONFIDENTIAL</transport-guarantee>
    </user-data-constraint>
  </security-constraint>
  <login-config>
    <auth-method>CLIENT-CERT</auth-method>
  </login-config>

</web-app>

If you wish to get information about the client or server certificates in your application, then you can use the following snippet.

//omitting imports

@WebServlet("/*")
public class IdCardServlet extends HttpServlet {
  protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
  }

  protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
    PrintWriter writer = response.getWriter();
    X509Certificate[] certs = (X509Certificate[]) request.getAttribute("javax.servlet.request.X509Certificate");
    if (certs != null) {
      List<X509Certificate> certificateList = Arrays.asList(certs);
      for (X509Certificate cert : certificateList) {
        writer.write(cert.getSubjectDN().getName());
      }
    }
  }
}

At this point you’re able to read client side certificates in your web app. The only thing left to do is to make sure the certificate presented by the client has not revoked by the CA. To accomplish that you’re going to have to keep a certificate revocation list (CRL) or make an OCSP (online certificate status protocol) request. These topics will be discussed in a future article.

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Configuring Tomcat to accept Estonian ID card

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Setting up client side authentication