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Network Security Services for Java (JSS)

Primary Newsgroup: mozilla.dev.tech.crypto
Alternate Newsgroup: mozilla.dev.tech.crypto

Description

Network Security Services for Java (JSS) is a Java interface to NSS. It supports most of the security standards and encryption technologies supported by NSS. JSS also provides a pure Java interface for ASN.1 types and BER/DER encoding.

JSS is used by Red Hat and Sun products that do crypto in Java. JSS is available under the Mozilla Public License, the GNU General Public License, and the GNU Lesser General Public License. JSS requires NSPR and NSS. For information on downloading NSS releases as tar files, see Download PKI Source.

What's New

JSS 4.2.5 have been released.
There is an FAQ for JSS.

Get It

JSS lives in CVS in the mozilla/security/jss/ directory. You should follow the build instructions if you want to build the source.

If you don't have CVS access, you can grab a tarball of the source from the FTP site: ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/security/jss/releases/

You can also download precompiled binaries from the same FTP site.

Or you can view the source online.

Documentation

Before you use JSS, you should have a good understanding of the crypto technologies it uses. You might want to read these documents:

Introduction to Public-Key Cryptography. Explains the basic concepts of public-key cryptography that underlie NSS and JSS.
Introduction to SSL. Introduces the SSL protocol, including information about cryptographic ciphers supported by SSL and the steps involved in the SSL handshake.

Check the FAQ if you have questions or problems.

Here's version-specific documentation:

JSS 4.2.5	Release Notes Build Instructions Javadoc [online] [zipped]
JSS 4.2	Release Notes Build Instructions Javadoc [online] [zipped]
JSS 4.1	Release Notes Build Instructions Javadoc [zipped]
JSS 4.0	Release Notes Build Instructions Javadoc [zipped]
JSS 3.7	Release Notes Build Instructions Javadoc [zipped]
JSS 3.6	Release Notes Build Instructions Javadoc [zipped]
JSS 3.5	Release Notes Build Instructions Javadoc [zipped]
JSS 3.4	Release Notes Build Instructions Javadoc [zipped]
JSS 3.3	Release Notes Build Instructions Javadoc [zipped]
JSS 3.2	Release Notes Build Instructions Javadoc [zipped]
JSS 3.1.1	Release Notes Build Instructions Javadoc [zipped]
JSS 3.1	Release Notes Build Instructions Javadoc [zipped]

Read Using JSS to get you started with development after you've built and downloaded it.

JCA Provider Notes: if you are using JSS as a JCA provider, read this document to find out how JSS supports (and doesn't support) the JCA specifications.

You can view the source in HMTL.

There's all sorts of good security and crypto documentation on the NSS page.

Communication

To participate in ongoing technical discussions related to JSS, use the mozilla.dev.tech.crypto newsgroup, or tune in to the IRC channel #mozcrypto on the server: irc://irc.mozilla.org/#mozcrypto.