SSL Init failed: Keystore was tampered with, or password was incorrect

Question

Hi all,
I encountered the following error while I try to get the output stream to write out the content into an HTTPS connection.
java.net.SocketException: Default SSL context init failed: Keystore was tampered with, or password was incorrect
     at javax.net.ssl.DefaultSSLSocketFactory.createSocket(Unknown Source)
     at sun.net.www.protocol.https.HttpsClient.afterConnect(Unknown Source)
     at sun.net.www.protocol.https.AbstractDelegateHttpsURLConnection.connect(Unknown Source)
     at sun.net.www.protocol.http.HttpURLConnection.getOutputStream(Unknown Source)
     at sun.net.www.protocol.https.HttpsURLConnectionImpl.getOutputStream(Unknown Source)Below is my code to achieve the sending of the content to the HTTPS connection.
public void sendMessage(Properties headers, byte[] content) throws Exception
    try
      addRequestHeaders(headers);
      _conn.setRequestMethod("POST");
      _conn.setDoInput(true);
      _conn.setDoOutput(true);
      OutputStream os = _conn.getOutputStream();//this line lead to the exception
      os.write(content);
      _respCode = _conn.getResponseCode();
      _respMsg = _conn.getResponseMessage();
    catch (IOException ex)
      throw ex
  }Due to the server is deployed in clustered env, I have put the truststore and keystore in a shared folder which allows the nodes to access. Thus in my code I have set the truststore, keystore location and the truststore, keystore password in the System properties as follow.
      System.setProperty("javax.net.ssl.keyStore", getKeyStore());
      System.setProperty("javax.net.ssl.keyStorePassword", getKeyStorePass());
      System.setProperty("javax.net.ssl.trustStore", getTrustStore());
      System.setProperty("javax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword", getTrustStore());The getKeyStore() and getTrustStore() will be returned the path to the shared folder which contain the truststore/keystore respectively.
The keystore tampered error only happened intermitently. I am sure that my keystore and truststore password is set correctly.
Could I know that is the keystore designed in a way that it can be accessed by multiple thread? will there be any file locking on the keystore while two thread trying to init the HTTPS and eventually cause the keystore tampered problem?
Thanks

Answer 1

In my case, I am certain that all fields are correct, because the code works half the time. The thing is my code is running inside Tomcat (as a servlet); I am noticing that whenever I update my Jar with any code change and restart Tomcat, I am hitting this issue intermittently. Another update-and-restart sometimes solves the problem & my connection establishment is successful.
There are 2 key things I would like to know:
1) Difference b/w the exception messages "<span class="jive-subject"> Keystore was tampered with, or password was incorrect
" and " failed to decrypt safe contents entry ".
2) Whether any caching is going on because of Tomcat being in the picture (although I am not at all sure why this should happen).
Would love to get through with this ASAP. Please let me know your thoughts if any.
Thanks,
Vivek