XML Key Management Service (XKMS)

Use case

CXF security uses asymmetric algorithms for different purposes: encryption of symmetric keys and payloads, signing security tokens and messages, proof of possession.
Normally the public keys (in form of X509 certificates) are stored in java keystores.

For example, if sender encrypts the message payload sending to the receiver, he should have access to receiver certificate saved in local keystore.
The sender uses this certificate for message encryption and receiver decrypts request with corresponded own private key:

Seems to be OK? Imagine now that you have production environment with 100 different clients of this service and service certificate is expired. You should reissue and replace certificate in ALL client keystores! Even more, if keystores are packaged into war files or OSGi bundles – they should be unpackaged and updated. Not really acceptable for enterprise environments.

Therefore large service landscapes support central certificates management. It means that X509 certificates are not stored locally in keystores, but are provided and administrated centrally.

Normally it is a responsibility of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) established in organization. PKI is responsible to create, manage, store, distribute, synchronize and revoke public certificates and certification authorities (CAs).

XKMS Specification

W3C specifies standard protocol to distribute and register public keys that can be used for XML-based cryptography, including signature and encryption: XML Key Management Specification (XKMS 2.0).
The XKMS Specification comprises two parts – the XML Key Information Service Specification (XKISS) describing the runtime aspects of key lookup and certificate validation and the XML Key Registration Service Specification (XKRSS) describing the administrative aspects of registering, renewing, revoking and recovering certificates.