Tha classes SSLSocketFactory and SSLServerSocketFactory are used to create SSL sockets. Quite often instances of these factory classes are passed into third-party libraries as a source of sockets. However, it isn't possible to control the operation of these classes without virtually recreating the entire SSL security provider mechanism, as instances of them can't be created directly - the factories are usually obtained in turn form an instance of SSLContext, which in turn is obtained from a static method (SSLContext.getInstance).

There is already a class (SSLParameters) which can be used to control the behaviour of SSLEngines and individual sockets, via SSLEngine.setSSLParameters and SSLSocket.setSSLParameters. However there are no corresponding methods on either SSLSocketFactory or SSLServerSocketFactory. The appropriate getSSLParameters and setSSLParameter methods should be added.