Interface PrivateKey

All Superinterfaces:
Destroyable, Key, Serializable
All Known Subinterfaces:
DHPrivateKey, DSAPrivateKey, ECPrivateKey, RSAMultiPrimePrivateCrtKey, RSAPrivateCrtKey, RSAPrivateKey, XECPrivateKey
public interface PrivateKey
extends Key, Destroyable

A private key. The purpose of this interface is to group (and provide type safety for) all private key interfaces.

Note: The specialized private key interfaces extend this interface. See, for example, the DSAPrivateKey interface in java.security.interfaces.

Implementations should override the default destroy and isDestroyed methods from the Destroyable interface to enable sensitive key information to be destroyed, cleared, or in the case where such information is immutable, unreferenced. Finally, since PrivateKey is Serializable, implementations should also override ObjectOutputStream.writeObject(java.lang.Object) to prevent keys that have been destroyed from being serialized.

Since:
1.1
See Also:
Key, PublicKey, Certificate, Signature.initVerify(java.security.PublicKey), DSAPrivateKey, RSAPrivateKey, RSAPrivateCrtKey

Field Summary

Fields
Modifier and Type Field Description
static long serialVersionUID

The class fingerprint that is set to indicate serialization compatibility with a previous version of the class.

Method Summary

Methods declared in interface javax.security.auth.Destroyable

destroy, isDestroyed

Methods declared in interface java.security.Key

getAlgorithm, getEncoded, getFormat

Field Detail

serialVersionUID

static final long serialVersionUID

The class fingerprint that is set to indicate serialization compatibility with a previous version of the class.

See Also:
Constant Field Values