Setting up Java Applications to Communicate with MongoDB, Kerberos and SSL

By Alex Komyagin, Technical Services Engineer at MongoDB

Setting up Kerberos authentication and SSL encryption in a MongoDB Java application is not as simple as other languages. In this post, I’m going to show you how to create a Kerberos and SSL enabled Java application that communicates with MongoDB.

My original setup consists of the following:

1) KDC server:

kdc.mongotest.com

kerberos config file (/etc/krb5.conf):

[logging]
 default = FILE:/var/log/krb5libs.log
 kdc = FILE:/var/log/krb5kdc.log
 admin_server = FILE:/var/log/kadmind.log

[libdefaults]
 default_realm = MONGOTEST.COM
 dns_lookup_realm = false
 dns_lookup_kdc = false
 ticket_lifetime = 24h
 renew_lifetime = 7d
 forwardable = true

[realms]
 MONGOTEST.COM = {
  kdc = kdc.mongotest.com
  admin_server = kdc.mongotest.com
 }

[domain_realm]
 .mongotest.com = MONGOTEST.COM
 mongotest.com = MONGOTEST.COM

KDC has the following principals:

• [email protected] - user principle (for java app)
• mongodb/[email protected] - service principle (for mongodb server)

2) MongoDB server:

rhel64.mongotest.com

MongoDB version: 2.6.0

MongoDB config file:

dbpath=<some path>
logpath=<some path>
fork=true
auth = true
setParameter = authenticationMechanisms=GSSAPI
sslOnNormalPorts = true
sslPEMKeyFile = /etc/ssl/mongodb.pem

This server also has the global environment variable $KRB5_KTNAME set to the keytab file exported from KDC.

Application user is configured in the admin database like this:

{ "_id" : "[email protected]", "user" : "[email protected]", "db" : "$external", "credentials" : { "external" : true }, "roles" : [ { "role" : "readWrite", "db" : "test" } ] }

Download the Java driver:

wget http://central.maven.org/maven2/org/mongodb/mongo-java-driver/2.12.1/mongo-java-driver-2.12.1.jar

Install java and jdk:

sudo yum install java-1.7.0 sudo yum install java-1.7.0-devel

Create a certificate store for Java and store the server certificate there, so that Java knows who it should trust:

keytool -importcert -file mongodb.crt -alias mongoCert -keystore firstTrustStore

(mongodb.crt is just a public certificate part of mongodb.pem)

Copy kerberos config file to the application server: /etc/krb5.conf or ““C:\WINDOWS\krb5.ini“` (otherwise you’ll have to specify kdc and realm as Java runtime options)

Use kinit to store the principal password on the application server:

kinit [email protected]

As an alternative to kinit, you can use JAAS to cache kerberos credentials.

Compile and run the Java program

javac -cp ../mongo-java-driver-2.12.1.jar SSLApp.java
java -cp .:../mongo-java-driver-2.12.1.jar -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore=firstTrustStore -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword=changeme -Djavax.security.auth.useSubjectCredsOnly=false SSLApp

It is important to specify useSubjectCredsOnly=false, otherwise you’ll get the “No valid credentials provided (Mechanism level: Failed to find any Kerberos tgt)” exception from Java. As we discovered, this is not strictly necessary in all cases, but it is if you are relying on kinit to get the service ticket.

The Java driver needs to construct MongoDB service principal name in order to request the Kerberos ticket. The service principal is constructed based on the server name you provide (unless you explicitly asked to canonicalize server name). For example, if I change rhel64.mongotest.com to the host IP address in the connection URI, I would be getting Kerberos exceptions No valid credentials provided (Mechanism level: Server not found in Kerberos database (7) - UNKNOWN_SERVER)]. So be sure you specify the same server host name as you used in the Kerberos principal (). Adding -Dsun.security.krb5.debug=true to Java runtime options helps a lot in debugging kerberos auth issues.

These steps should help simplify the process of connecting Java applications with SSL. Before deploying any application with MongoDB, be sure to read through our Security Checklist which outlines recommended security measures to protect your MongoDB installation. More information on configuring MongoDB Security can be found in the MongoDB Manual.

For further questions, feel free to reach out to the MongoDB team through google-groups.