Connection timeouts to HTTPS URLs

Question

I'm needing to ignore all SSL certificates in Java, but I can't for the life of me get it to work. I've looked through the following pages listed below already, but nothing seems to work on every https link.

stackoverflow.com/questions/19517538/ignoring-ssl-certificate-in-apache-httpclient-4-3
stackoverflow.com/questions/13470998/ignoring-ssl-validation-in-java
stackoverflow.com/questions/12060250/ignore-ssl-certificate-errors-with-java
stackoverflow.com/questions/2694281/ignore-certificate-errors-when-requesting-a-url-in-java
stackoverflow.com/questions/6681969/java-ignore-certificate-validation
www.nakov.com/blog/2009/07/16/disable-certificate-validation-in-java-ssl-connections/
code.google.com/p/misc-utils/wiki/JavaHttpsUrl
www.exampledepot.8waytrips.com/egs/javax.net.ssl/TrustAll.html
www.obsidianscheduler.com/blog/ignoring-self-signed-certificates-in-java/
java.dzone.com/articles/how-ignore-cert-and-host-name
gist.github.com/henrik242/1510165

I have a good reason for needing to do this so don't worry, but I really need to be able to do it. Basically, I'm needing to go through a list of internal https links and check to make sure that they are all still valid and aren't broken links. Some links works fine since the Java code ignores the certificate and can get an HTTP response header back, but others just timeout even though they work fine in my web browser. All of these links are internal company links.

I've tried using HttpsURLConnection as well as HttpGet and HttpClient. Could there be something else that I'm not thinking of, or something unrelated to Java that could be causing the pages to timeout? I just want to make sure the URL of the link exists. Here are the exceptions I am getting.

With HttpGet/SSLContextBuilder/PoolingHttpClientConnectionManager:

org.apache.http.conn.HttpHostConnectException: Connect to -removed- [-removed-] failed: Connection timed out: connect

With HttpsUrlConnection using X509TrustManager:

java.net.ConnectException: Connection timed out: connect

Specifically, I've tried the following and many variations of it based on the links posted above:

TrustManager[] trustAllCerts = new TrustManager[] {
    new X509TrustManager() {
        public void checkClientTrusted(X509Certificate[] chain, String authType) {}
        public void checkServerTrusted(X509Certificate[] chain, String authType) {}
        public X509Certificate[] getAcceptedIssuers() {
            return null;
        }
    }
};

// Install the all-trusting trust manager
javax.net.ssl.SSLContext sc = null;

try {
    sc = javax.net.ssl.SSLContext.getInstance("TLS");
    sc.init(null, trustAllCerts, new SecureRandom());

    // Create all-trusting host name verifier
    HostnameVerifier allHostsValid = new HostnameVerifier() {
        @Override
        public boolean verify(String arg0, SSLSession arg1) {
            return true;
        }
    };
    // Install the all-trusting host verifier
    HttpsURLConnection.setDefaultHostnameVerifier(allHostsValid);
}

I've also tried this as well as several variations: https://stackoverflow.com/a/19950935/1727920

Solution

Connection timeouts have nothing whatsoever to do with SSL certificates.

More likely you don't have the same HTTP Proxy settings as the browser. You need to set the system properties http.proxyHost and http.proxyPort to the same values used by the browser. If the HTTPS proxy settings are different from the HTTP proxy settings, set https.proxyHost and https.proxyPort accordingly.

EDIT For completeness: A lot of old sources erroneously mention a proxySet property. There is not and has never been such a property in the JDK. It was in the short-lived and long-defunct HotJava Bean of 1997. Similarly http.proxySet doesn't exist either. Proof: try setting them to false in circumstances where they should be true, and watch your program keep working.

Comments

[Jordan]

Thank you so much, that's exactly what it was: https proxy. The sites that were timing out looked like internal URLs, but they were on an external cloud server. I had the http proxy set, but not the https. I would up vote you, but I don't have enough reputation points...

[Bruno]

@Triad, even if you can't up-vote now, you can always accept the answer (the tick next to the answer's score).

[Jordan]

@Bruno Thanks, went ahead and checked it.