733375 - Password box of security device stays in front for seconds when entering the password

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Security: PSM, defect)

Description

[maarten]

Attachment: Firefox-Bugzilla-password.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux i686; rv:10.0.2) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0.2
Build ID: 20120216080748

Steps to reproduce:

In security-device manager I have installed a library (/usr/lib/libaetpkss.so) for AET Safesign 3.0.43 for smart card authentication.  When a website requests authentication the password box appears, password can be entered, the box disappears and authentication takes place.  Working with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 32 bit.

Normally (firefox 9.x and older) the password box disappears directly after entering the password and clicking OK.  With Firefox 10.0.x the password box stay in front of Firefox for 5 up to 30 seconds until the smart card authentication is completed.  Sometimes this takes 30 seconds and the users experience that the password-box is not responding anymore. After those seconds the Password box will finally disappear.  Older versions of Firefox did close the password box first before smartcard authentication completion, the user use to have a more direct experience.


Actual results:

The password box of the security device does not disappear directly after entering the password, this can take up to 30 seconds before finally disappearing.  During this time the smart card authentication takes place.  The user experienced is that the password window is not responding for some time.  This behaviore is new in Firefox 10.0.x


Expected results:

The password box should close immediately when entering the password and smart card authentication should take when the password window is closed.

Comment 1

[maarten]

The problem is easily reproducible on other Ubuntu installations as long as you have Safesign installed as security device and own a smart card.  I don't know how other Security devices respond.  The problem also exists with Ubuntu 12.04 beta and Firefox 11.0.
Buildname: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux i686; rv:11.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/11.0

Comment 2

[Dana Keeler (she/her) (use needinfo) [:keeler] (on leave)]

If the smartcard device/pkcs#11 library decides to perform a long blocking operation, there's not much we can do about it at the moment.