Java: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target

The problem appears when your server has self signed certificate. To workaround it you can add this certificate to the list of trusted certificates of your JVM.

In this article author describes how to fetch the certificate from your browser and add it to cacerts file of your JVM. You can either edit JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/security/cacerts file or run you application with -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore parameter. Verify which JDK/JRE you are using too as this is often a source of confusion.

See also: How are SSL certificate server names resolved/Can I add alternative names using keytool? If you run into java.security.cert.CertificateException: No name matching localhost found exception.

Here's what reliably works for me on macOS. Make sure to replace example.com and 443 with the actual hostname and port you're trying to connect to, and give a custom alias. The first command downloads the provided certificate from the remote server and saves it locally in x509 format. The second command loads the saved certificate into Java's SSL trust store.

openssl x509 -in <(openssl s_client -connect example.com:443 -prexit 2>/dev/null) -out ~/example.crtsudo keytool -importcert -file ~/example.crt -alias example -keystore $(/usr/libexec/java_home)/jre/lib/security/cacerts -storepass changeit

I had the same issue with a valid signed wildcard certificate from symantec.

First try running your java application with -Djavax.net.debug=SSL to see what is really going on.

I ended up importing the intermediate certificate which was causing the cert chain to break.

I downloaded the missing intermediate cert from symantec (you can see the download link to the missing cert in the ssl handshake log: http://svrintl-g3-aia.verisign.com/SVRIntlG3.cer in my case).

And I imported the cert in the java keystore. After importing the intermediate certificate my wildcard ssl cert finally started working:

keytool -import -keystore ../jre/lib/security/cacerts -trustcacerts -alias "VeriSign Class 3 International Server CA - G3" -file /pathto/SVRIntlG3.cer