267324 - "Bad certificate" dialog gives imprecise information

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Core Graveyard :: Security: UI, enhancement)

Description

[Dennis Kuehn]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041001 Firefox/0.10.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041001 Firefox/0.10.1

When you get a bad SSL certificate, Firefox displays a dialog, 
"Web Site Certified by an Unknown Authority". 
In it, it says: "...
Possible reasons for this error:
- Your browser does not recognize the Certificate Authority that issued the
site's certificate.
- The site's certificate is incomplete due to a server misconfiguration.
- You are connected to a site pretending to be [..], possibly to obtain your
confidential information.
...."


1: This information could be more precise. Firefox should be able to find out
*which* of the possible reasons actually apply (the worst browser on urth, IE,
actually does)
2: In this dialog, clicking "Cancel" should not be an option because you have to
choose a radio button anyway, 
and clicking "Cancel" simply redisplays the same dialog box, i.e. does nothing
useful.



Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. go to a ssl-secured web site which provides a bad certificate for its public key
2.
3.



Expected Results:  
show the exact reason ("unkown CA" or "incomplete certificate data: xxx
missing!" or "current site different from site quoted in the certificate.
current: xxx; in certificate: yyy")

Theme: Plastikfox Crystal SVG
(sorry, just filled in everything, didn't check with default theme, don't want
to switch to default now and fill in everything again)

Comment 1

[Josh Birnbaum]

->PSM

Comment 2

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.