170603 - FIPS mode does not prompt for master password reading mail

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Security: S/MIME, defect)

Description

[Charles Rosendahl]

See bug 142147 for possible dependencies

Build NSS3.6 Test builds

Problem:  
While not logged in:

In FIPS mode, the user appears to have to be logged in to validate signed
messages (or rather to store other people's certs in the cert manager).

If the other person's cert already exists in the cert manager, the user is
prompted to enter the master password and the signature validation occurs.

If the other person's cert is not already present in the cert manager, no master
 password prompt is displayed, and the signature is displayed as invalid for
unknown reasons.

On a side note, if the other person's cert was in the cert manager, and then
deleted, even after restarting the application you will be prompted to enter a
master password for mail signed by that person.  It seems that the
invalid/unknown reasons signature message only occurs for other people's certs
that have never been in the cert manager when you are not logged into FIPS.

Expected behavior:
The user should experience consistent behavior and be prompted to log into FIPS
for all messages.

Comment 1

[Brant Gurganus]

*** Bug 180584 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 2

[Bob Lord]

This bug will be a little bit of a challenge to verify. According to the report, if the sender's cert has ever validated in the past, TB will correctly prompt for the Master Password.  So you'd really want to start with a fresh TB profile to be sure you reproduced the problems.

It's a great catch, but an edge case I think.

Comment 3

[Rob.McMahon]

I don't know if this is related.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; SunOS i86pc; en-US; rv:1.9.2.5pre) Gecko/20100504 Lightning/1.0b2pre Lanikai/3.1b2

Every time I restart thunderbird (okay, Lanikai), it says "connecting to <IMAP server>", but doesn't prompt me for a passwprd.  I have to go to Edit->Preferences->Certificates->Security Devices->FIPS 140 ...
and select Login before it will prompt me for the master password.  Only after that will it prompt me for the password for the remote IMAP server.
This happens whether I `kill -HUP ...' the thunderbird process (the first time I noticed this) or exit it cleanly.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Bugs which mention FIPS http://mzl.la/1GbIGJT