NoSuchAlgorithmException: Algorithm HmacSHA1 not available

Question

Look at the following line of java:

Mac.getInstance("HmacSHA1");

If I put this in a simple test program, it runs without problems on my server. However, if I use this line in a container, I get

java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException: Algorithm HmacSHA1 not available
  at javax.crypto.Mac.getInstance(DashoA13*..)

The same JDK installation is used in both cases.

After googling around a bit, I managed to get it to work by doing two things:

1. Copying sunjce_provider.jar from $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/ext to the lib directory of the container.

2. Adding the following line to my code:

   java.security.Security.addProvider(new com.sun.crypto.provider.SunJCE());

Specifically, this happens to me in an Apache James mailet, but I'm pretty sure this is has to do with JVM options. Here is the startup script that it uses.

Although I got it to work in the end, the solution feels too hacked to be the right one. I would appreciate an explanation of what is going on, as well as a more "proper" solution.

Related question: Using Java crypto leads to NoSuchAlgorithmException. However, in this case I'm pretty sure the HmacSHA1 algorithm should be supported out of the box. As evidence, this works without problems in a test program.

Answer 1

The correct shortened form is as below

HmacMD5
HmacSHA1
HmacSHA256