Java encrypt serialized messages

Question

I was trying to encrypt my communication between the actors in my system. We want to encrypt multiple java classes so we decided to serialize them before encrypting However, when decrypting in our recipient there is no way of knowing which object we need to deserialize our decrypted data to. Is there a way one could see the class of serialized data without matching on Strings.

Answer 1

As the akka docs state, you can specify a common superclass.

If that isn't suitable here, wrap all communications into a single 'envelope' class, and then you always know the type to deserialize into: The envelope.

e.g. if you sometimes send a j.l.String object, and sometimes a com.foo.dirac.coolproject.Matrix class, yeah, now you don't know what to deserialize into. To solve that problem, create com.foo.dirac.coolproject.Envelope, and 'wrap' anything you ever send into one of these, then always deserialize into an Envelope.