JDK 1.7 doesn't support AES-GCM cipher suites

29 Jun 2020

Back to all posts

The Issue

Developer reported to me that there is handshake problem with an internal API gateway.

 javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: Received fatal alert: handshake_failure

Troubleshooting

I found curl and wget works well. So I decided to do a packet capture with tcpdump:

sudo /usr/sbin/tcpdump -Z appadm -w api.pcap host 10.xxx.xxx.xxx

Here are facts:

curl can get Server Hello and go through the complete SSL handshake
Java cannot get Server Hello
Both are using TLS 1.2

So I doubt it is about the Cipher Suites. The Java supported Cipher Suites are:

Cipher Suites (29 suites)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384 (0xc024)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384 (0xc028)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA256 (0x003d)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_ECDH_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384 (0xc026)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_ECDH_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384 (0xc02a)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA256 (0x006b)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA256 (0x006a)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA (0xc00a)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA (0xc014)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA (0x0035)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_ECDH_ECDSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA (0xc005)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_ECDH_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA (0xc00f)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA (0x0039)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA (0x0038)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 (0xc023)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 (0xc027)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 (0x003c)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_ECDH_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 (0xc025)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_ECDH_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 (0xc029)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 (0x0067)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256 (0x0040)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_ECDHE_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA (0xc009)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA (0xc013)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA (0x002f)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_ECDH_ECDSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA (0xc004)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_ECDH_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA (0xc00e)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA (0x0033)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA (0x0032)
    Cipher Suite: TLS_EMPTY_RENEGOTIATION_INFO_SCSV (0x00ff)

The curl pcap uses TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 which is not in the list. So I used following command to scan the supported cipher suites:

[appadm local]$ nmap --script ssl-enum-ciphers -p 443 lab-api-int.xxx.com

Starting Nmap 5.51 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2020-06-29 22:58 UTC
Nmap scan report for lab-api-int.xxx.com (10.xxx.xxx.xxx)
Host is up (0.00038s latency).
rDNS record for 10.yyy.yyy.yyy: lab2-api-int.yyy.yyy.com
PORT    STATE SERVICE
443/tcp open  https
| ssl-enum-ciphers: 
|   TLSv1.2
|     Ciphers (2)
|       TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
|       TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384
|     Compressors (1)
|_      uncompressed

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.77 seconds

So it is clear the handshake failure is about the Cipher Suites. Per stackover flow (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21289293/java-7-support-of-aes-gcm-in-ssl-tls), JDK 1.7, which is in use, doesn’t support AES-GCM cipher suites.

In this case, I had to ask developers to turn to JDK 1.8 and it works well!