Is there an ETA yet for when Firefox will use libpkix by default?

[Rob Stradling]

Brian,

It has been well over 3 years since the cross-certification looping bug
described in Bug #479508 and Bug #634074 was first filed. It was
decided that the proper fix was to wait for Firefox to migrate to
libpkix by default. We and our customers have been waiting patiently
for this fix.

The effects of this bug have apparently been getting worse over time,
and we don't believe that we can tolerate it for very much longer.

Might there be a Firefox 13.x point-release that will enable libpkix by
default?
Will Firefox 14 enable libpkix by default?
Or can you say that enabling libpkix by default will definitely not
happen until Firefox 15 or later?

If you're reasonably sure it won't happen by Firefox 14, my CTO has
asked me to urgently i) attempt to write an ugly kludge of a patch to
fix the bug in the "old" certificate verification library and then ii)
petition Mozilla and the NSS team to accept my patch and ship it in
Firefox 14 or sooner.

Thanks.

--
Rob Stradling
Senior Research & Development Scientist
COMODO - Creating Trust Online

[Wan-Teh Chang]

Rob,

Please fix the bug in the "old" certificate verification library. Thanks.

Are you going to use the approach outlined by Nelson in bug 479508 and
bug 482153?

Wan-Teh

[Erwann Abalea]

Le vendredi 8 juin 2012 22:55:33 UTC+2, Rob Stradling a écrit :
[...]

> Might there be a Firefox 13.x point-release that will enable libpkix by
> default?
> Will Firefox 14 enable libpkix by default?
> Or can you say that enabling libpkix by default will definitely not
> happen until Firefox 15 or later?

What is missing from libpkix to delay its adoption? If I understood correctly, it's already used for EV validation, and seems to work, right?

> If you're reasonably sure it won't happen by Firefox 14, my CTO has
> asked me to urgently i) attempt to write an ugly kludge of a patch to
> fix the bug in the "old" certificate verification library and then ii)
> petition Mozilla and the NSS team to accept my patch and ship it in
> Firefox 14 or sooner.

You'll have to rewrite the construction path algorithm to avoid duplicates...
Bon courage.

[Kai Engert]

On 09.06.2012 11:53, Erwann Abalea wrote:
> Le vendredi 8 juin 2012 22:55:33 UTC+2, Rob Stradling a écrit :
> [...]

>> Might there be a Firefox 13.x point-release that will enable libpkix by
>> default?
>> Will Firefox 14 enable libpkix by default?
>> Or can you say that enabling libpkix by default will definitely not
>> happen until Firefox 15 or later?

> What is missing from libpkix to delay its adoption?

See the dependency list of
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=pkix-default
for the list of blocker issues.

Any contributions to get those resolved would be highly appreciated.

Thanks
Kai

[Rob Stradling]

Hi Wan-Teh.

I'm afraid I have nowhere near enough knowledge of NSS internals to turn
Nelson's "disgusting hack" [1] into something that the NSS team would,
under normal circumstances, "contemplate committing" [2].

I've just tested Nelson's 2 patches ([1] and [3]) against
mozilla-inbound, and they appear to fix the problem. IMHO, a
"disgusting hack" fix is much better than a non-disgusting,
significantly delayed fix.

So, how would Mozilla and the NSS Team feel about committing Nelson's 2
patches?


[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=366236
[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=482153#c1
[3] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=366225


P.S. An alternative idea, for which I am willing to write a patch (if
you think this would be preferable to Nelson's "disgusting hack"):
- Define a certHashesToAvoidUsing[] array in
nssCertificateArray_FindBestCertificate(). Populate this array with the
hashes of all of the UTN->AddTrust and AddTrust->UTN cross-certificates.
Make the code consult this list: if a match is found, do not consider
this cert to be the best match.


P.P.S. 2 other ideas which didn't appear to work...

1. I tried adding the affected UTN<-->AddTrust cross-certificates as
distrusted built-ins, but this didn't help. Presumably "distrust" is
only evaluated after the "best" certificate chain has been chosen,
rather than during the process of chain selection.

2. I tried removing one of the affected UTN root-certificates and then
adding the relevant AddTrust->UTN cross-certificate as a built-in. This
didn't work either, presumably because the UTN root-certificate was for
some reason still listed as a Software Security Device.

[Rob Stradling]

I've just filed Bug 764393 to track this request. I've attached an
updated version of Nelson's "disgusting hack" patch. I've also attached
a patch for the alternative idea I mentioned.

I'd be very grateful if the NSS Team would seriously consider accepting
one of these two patches ASAP!

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