When loading the default JVM trust store, if the JVM trust store contains an invalid certificate, the exception contains insufficient information to determine which certificate is invalid, making it very difficult to fix the problem.
To reproduce the issue: 1. Modify the default JVM trust store to contain invalid information. A very easy way to do this on openjdk / red hat systems is to edit /etc/pki/ca-trust/extracted/java/cacerts and add garbage text to the file. 2. Run this code: TrustManagerFactory = TrustManagerFactory.getInstance(TrustManagerFactory.getDefaultAlgorithm()); // initializing the trust store with a null KeyStore will load the default JVM trust store tmf.init((KeyStore) null); This stack trace results: Caused by: java.security.KeyStoreException: problem accessing trust store at java.base/sun.security.ssl.TrustManagerFactoryImpl.engineInit(TrustManagerFactoryImpl.java:73) at java.base/javax.net.ssl.TrustManagerFactory.init(TrustManagerFactory.java:282) ... 81 common frames omitted Caused by: java.io.IOException: toDerInputStream rejects tag type 97 at java.base/sun.security.util.DerValue.toDerInputStream(DerValue.java:1155) at java.base/sun.security.pkcs12.PKCS12KeyStore.engineLoad(PKCS12KeyStore.java:2013) at java.base/sun.security.util.KeyStoreDelegator.engineLoad(KeyStoreDelegator.java:221) at java.base/java.security.KeyStore.load(KeyStore.java:1473) at java.base/sun.security.ssl.TrustStoreManager$TrustAnchorManager.loadKeyStore(TrustStoreManager.java:390) at java.base/sun.security.ssl.TrustStoreManager$TrustAnchorManager.getTrustedCerts(TrustStoreManager.java:336) at java.base/sun.security.ssl.TrustStoreManager.getTrustedCerts(TrustStoreManager.java:57) at java.base/sun.security.ssl.TrustManagerFactoryImpl.engineInit(TrustManagerFactoryImpl.java:49) ... 83 common frames omitted Throwing an exception with a more detailed error message facilitates debugging and ultimately fixing such problems. ------------- Commit messages: - JDK-8311892: TrustManagerFactory loading an invalid keystore yield vague exception Changes: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/14834/files Webrev: https://webrevs.openjdk.org/?repo=jdk&pr=14834&range=00 Issue: https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8311892 Stats: 5 lines in 1 file changed: 4 ins; 0 del; 1 mod Patch: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/14834.diff Fetch: git fetch https://git.openjdk.org/jdk.git pull/14834/head:pull/14834 PR: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/14834