Https with mutual authentication

Question

I am trying to authenticate my java client using a client certificate.
My java clients work fine so far, I can send http post/get and get a response from the server. An http 403 response…
The Problem seems to be that I imported the client certificate wrong.
I got 2 files:
a ca.crt file with a certificate inside
and a name.pem with certificate and key like:
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
lalala
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
blablabla
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
Then I tried to import these files(including the server certificat that i exported from my Browser) into my key-/truststore
Tried to:
Imported all into …/cacerts
And:
In separate keystores for server cert and client cert
Still 403
In SSL debug i can see that keystore an truststore are correct.(set as VM Args)
I use different implementations Apache HttpClient and native java, and I don’t think the problem is in the code.
I check the connection with cURL:
curl cacert ca.crt cert name.pem form field=plain form id=1 https://myserver.com/hello
Everything works fine with cURL ---> certificates are ok
Any help or hint is greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Yuu shouldn't be importing a private key. You shouldn't even have it outside the keystore it was generated in. You've just made it non-private, i.e. useless.
The steps are as follows:
1. Generate a keypair.
Either:
2.1 generate a self-signed certificate, export it, and import the exported file it into the peer's truststore,
or
2.2 generate a CSR, get it signed, import it back into the same keystore with the same alias, and import the CA's certificate into the peer's truststore if necessary.