165006 - certificate viewer for an untrusted certificate should highlight the problem

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core Graveyard :: Security: UI, enhancement, P3)

Description

[timeless]

bug 164946 and bug 141612 (which may be the same) and others describe cases
where you get a warning about some problem in a certificate.

There's a button view certificate.

When you click to view the certificate, you see all of the fields, but you have
no idea what's so special about the certificate that made mozilla dislike it.

In the case of bug 164946, it would help if the /issuer/ certificate field was
highlighted (perhaps in red, perhaps yellow background, perhaps selected by
default) along with a note explaining what's special about the field.

In this case something like:

This issuer is not in your list of <a href="-x-timeless-psm:knownissuers">known
certificate issuers</a>. There is no way to know whether this certificate is
really from the issuer it says it's from, you should contact the site which
provided the issuer and indicate this problem or contact the issuer and ask them
for confirmation that they issued it.

Comment 1

[Susie Wyshak]

If this gets implemented I'd be careful about "your list." The user wouldn't
know where this list came from and why the issuer wasn't on the list.

FYI I find the Netscape Help file on this topic very informative. 
As long as we could get embedders to always transfer this info to their help, I
think a Help or More Info button would be even more useful than showing the
stored certs.

Comment 2

[John G. Myers]

Mass reassign ssaux bugs to nobody

Comment 3

[John G. Myers]

Modulo bug 191897, the original dialog box gives the best explanation that is
available to give.  The proposed wording is atrocious.  This is not a useful
enhancement request.