Summary

This change moves Elliptic Curve (EC) cryptography from the jdk.crypto.ec module to java.base and starts the deprecation process for jdk.crypto.ec.

Problem

jdk.crypto.ec is a module that has outlasted its need. It contains core cryptographic algorithms in the SunEC JCE Provider that are alternatives to RSA [1] which are in java.base.

Solution

This CSR marks the jdk.crypto.ec module as deprecated with the intent to be removed in a future release. An empty jdk.crypto.ec module will remain for now to maintain compatibility. There should be no compatibility risk for application using EC through the JCE public API. There are no public API changes to EC, XEC, and EdDSA classes. Developers no longer need to include jdk.crypto.ec in their jlink or java command lines. Applications using JDK internal classes sun.security.ec and sun.security.ec.ed classes, will now fail and module usage must be changed to java.base.

# jdk/bin/javac --add-exports jdk.crypto.ec/sun.security.ec.ed=ALL-UNNAMED TestEdOps.java
warning: [options] module name in --add-exports option not found: jdk.crypto.ec
TestEdOps.java:37: error: package sun.security.ec.ed is not visible
import sun.security.ec.ed.*;
                      ^

These internal classes will be accessible through java.base.

# jdk/bin/javac --add-exports java.base/sun.security.ec.ed=ALL-UNNAMED TestEdOps.java

The Release Notes will notify of the module's deprecation with intent to remove and the usage of the empty module. This will be integrated into JDK 22 and is available for backport into JDK 17 and JDK 21.

Specification

Most of the change is moving code to the java.base directory. The most notable change is module-info.java which states the deprecation:

open/src/jdk.crypto.ec/share/classes/module-info.java

   */
+ @Deprecated(since="22", forRemoval = true)
   module jdk.crypto.ec {
-     provides java.security.Provider with sun.security.ec.SunEC;
   }

The pull request is located at https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/pull/14457

[1]https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8446