Getting root and intermediate certificates from an end-entity

I've used BouncyCastle 1.56 for this test.

One way to get the issuer's certificate from the end entity is to look for the Authority Information Access extension.

This extension may be present (it's not mandatory) and may contain the URL to get the issuer's certificate (issuer is the certificate "above" the current one, so the end entity's issuer is the intermediate, and the intermediate's issuer is the root).

You can get this extension value with BouncyCastle:

import java.security.cert.X509Certificate;
import org.bouncycastle.asn1.x509.AccessDescription;
import org.bouncycastle.asn1.x509.AuthorityInformationAccess;
import org.bouncycastle.asn1.x509.Extension;
import org.bouncycastle.asn1.x509.GeneralName;
import org.bouncycastle.asn1.x509.X509ObjectIdentifiers;
import org.bouncycastle.jce.provider.BouncyCastleProvider;
import org.bouncycastle.x509.extension.X509ExtensionUtil;

X509Certificate cert = // end entity certificate

// get Authority Information Access extension (will be null if extension is not present)
byte[] extVal = cert.getExtensionValue(Extension.authorityInfoAccess.getId());
AuthorityInformationAccess aia = AuthorityInformationAccess.getInstance(X509ExtensionUtil.fromExtensionValue(extVal));

// check if there is a URL to issuer's certificate
AccessDescription[] descriptions = aia.getAccessDescriptions();
for (AccessDescription ad : descriptions) {
    // check if it's a URL to issuer's certificate
    if (ad.getAccessMethod().equals(X509ObjectIdentifiers.id_ad_caIssuers)) {
        GeneralName location = ad.getAccessLocation();
        if (location.getTagNo() == GeneralName.uniformResourceIdentifier) {
            String issuerUrl = location.getName().toString();
            // http URL to issuer (test in your browser to see if it's a valid certificate)
            // you can use java.net.URL.openStream() to create a InputStream and create
            // the certificate with your CertificateFactory
            URL url = new URL(issuerUrl);
            X509Certificate issuer = (X509Certificate) certificateFactory.generateCertificate(url.openStream());
        }
    }
}

So you can use this code with the end entity certificate to get the intermediate. Then you use it again with the intermediate to get the root.

Then you add the root to your TrustAnchor and the validation should work.

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Note: But as I said, this extension is not mandatory and may not be present. In this case, getExtensionValue will return null, and the only alternative that I know is to search for the certificates in google and download them (those certificate chains are usually public and not hard to find)

btw, if we have out certificate installed in windows, everything is much simpler:

KeyStore ks = KeyStore.getInstance("Windows-MY");
ks.load(null, null);
String alias = "your alias";
ArrayList<X509Certificate> certsChain = new ArrayList<>();
if (ks.isCertificateEntry(alias)) {
    Certificate[] chain = ks.getCertificateChain(alias);
    System.out.println("Chain length: " + chain.length);
        for(Certificate c : chain) certsChain.add((X509Certificate)c);
}

Collections.reverse(certsChain);
certsChain.forEach(MainClass::printDBG);

boom, and the whole certificates chain is ready