RFR[12] JDK-8214096: sun.security.util.SignatureUtil passes null parameter, so JCE validation fails

[Weijun Wang]

> On Dec 18, 2018, at 9:14 PM, Sean Mullan <sean.mullan at oracle.com> wrote:
> 
> On 12/17/18 10:14 PM, Weijun Wang wrote:
>> Hi Valerie,
>> Please put lines 87 and 100 into the if-not-null block. Otherwise fine.
>> Do you think we can enhance the Signature::setParameter method and claim a null parameter is not meaningful at all and should not have any effect on the internal state of the signature object? Otherwise an application really has no idea whether to call it.
> 
> That would be a specification change, so it can't be as part of this fix, since it is past RDP.

I understand.

> It is also has a somewhat high compatibility risk, since it would require existing 3rd-party providers (such as BouncyCastle) that throw NPE to change their implementation.

Even if we do not specify that a certain exception must be thrown when null is used, we need to make sure setParameter(null) is completely useless, which means an implementation shall not use it to do any meaningful thing to set (or reset, or reinitialize) anything. The following codes must be equivalent to no-op:

  try {
    sig.setParameter(null);
  } catch (Exception e) {
    //
  }

Thanks,
Max

> 
> It is unfortunate that the behavior of a null parameter was never clearly defined.
> 
> --Sean
> 
>> Thanks,
>> Max
>>> On Dec 18, 2018, at 8:41 AM, Valerie Peng <valerie.peng at oracle.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Any one has time to review this straightforward fix? Details on cause and fix is elaborated in the link below:
>>> 
>>> Bug: https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8214096
>>> 
>>> Webrev can be found at http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~valeriep/8214096/webrev.00/
>>> 
>>> Regards,
>>> Valerie
>>> 
>>>