Self-Signed Java Applets

Generate a new keystore "testkey.keystore" as follows:

keytool -genkey -keyalg RSA -sigalg MD5withRSA -keystore testkey.keystore -alias testkey -validity 1460

Using this command, the keytool will generate a new keypair and create a self signed certificate for its public key. To create the certificate, the keytool will prompt for the necessary bits of X.509 information.

To sign the applet, use code similar to this (this code snipped was copied out of an Ant script):

<exec executable="${env.JAVA_HOME}/bin/jarsigner.exe">
    <arg value="-keystore"/>
    <arg value="testkey.keystore"/>
    <arg value="-storepass"/>
    <arg value="changeit"/>
    <arg value="-signedjar"/>
    <arg value="output.jar"/>
    <arg value="input.jar"/>
    <arg value="testkey"/>
</exec>

In order to run an applet signed with this key, the generated certificate may have to be imported into the Java plugin. For this, the certificate must be exported and stored in a file (e.g. 'testkey.cer'). The command line used to do this is:

keytool -export -alias testkey -file testkey.cer -keystore  testkey.keystore

The default keystore password is 'changeit'


Sharing Java objects between class loader instances
http://tom.conjective.ch/tomtom/space/Sharing+Java+objects+between+class+loader+instances