You're right: "jdbc:oracle:thin" driver won't read sqlnet.ora. But it will read $TNS_ADMIN/tnsnames.ora. And it will also read $TNS_ADMIN/ojdbc.properties, which is sort of like Oracle JDBC's equivalent to sqlnet.ora.

To configure cipher suites for Oracle JDBC, you'll need to configure the "oracle.net.ssl_cipher_suites" connection property in your ojdbc.properties file. Make sure to configure the property with JSSE cipher suite names. Sometimes, the JSSE name will be different from the name used in sqlnet.ora

You can also put your wallet location in ojdbc.properties, configuring it with the "oracle.net.wallet_location" property. So your file might end up looking like this:

# TODO: Add other cipher suite names    
oracle.net.ssl_cipher_suites=TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384, TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
oracle.net.wallet_location=/path/to/your/wallet.sso

Or, if your wallet.sso is in the TNS_ADMIN directory, you can use a "${environment-variable-name}" expression to configure wallet_location as the TNS_ADMIN environment variable:

# TODO: Add other cipher suite names
oracle.net.ssl_cipher_suites=TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384, TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
oracle.net.wallet_location=${TNS_ADMIN}

All I've written so far is just addressing that Oracle JDBC doesn't read sqlnet.ora, and that it reads connection properties instead, and these properties can be stored in an ojdbc.properties file.

However, I usually don't need to configure cipher suites, so I'm now looking at the other side of the or condition in our error message:

protocol is disabled or cipher suites are inappropriate

Maybe the issue is TLS protocol version, and not the ciphers? It might be that your Java security provider is requiring TLS 1.3, and the database only supports 1.2. If you're OK with using TLS 1.2, then you might try setting "oracle.net.ssl_version" in the properties file as well:

oracle.net.ssl_version=1.3 or 1.2

Please let me know if this helps.