32010 - SSL client auth dialog needs "remember decision" box

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

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

Description

[John G. Myers]

The "User Identification Request" dialog box for selecting the client cert to 
send to a server should have a "remember this decision" checkbox.

Comment 1

[John Unruh]

Changing QA contact to nitinp

Comment 2

[John Unruh]

Reassigning to ddrinan.

Comment 3

[Bob Lord]

Target -> 2.1

Comment 4

[Stephane Saux]

target -> future
remove nsenterprise.

Comment 5

[John Unruh]

Mass assigning QA to ckritzer.

Comment 6

[Kai Engert (:KaiE:)]

Would this feature remember based on the host, or needs it to consider the path,
too?

Comment 7

[John G. Myers]

Remembering based on host would be sufficient, I believe.  Since the SSL session
(and thus the client cert) is shared across all paths on a host, this is reasonable.

Comment 8

[Stephane Saux]

Agreed.
Kai, what we should do, if possible, is detect that a cert was presented because
of a "remember this decision" hit on the client side. If the server rejects this
certs, we should inform the user and not reuse the remembered cert when the user
attempts again (at least in this session, but it's probably a better idea to
just forget the prefs permanently).

Comment 9

[John Unruh]

*** Bug 177689 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[Bettina Martelli]

I still don't see why bug 177689 should be a duplicate of this bug.
If I select a button, I wish it simply to stay checked, and I don't
need any extra dialogs to "remember this decision".
It is a real bug not an enhancement.

Comment 11

[anatolie]

Mozilla Thunderbird 0.2 (20030901) (win98)
Bug still here.

Comment 12

[Kai Engert (:KaiE:)]

Note that some work on this has been done in bug 431819.

Comment 13

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

This subject (browser UI for client cert selection) has recently gotten a 
bunch of discussion in the IETF TLS mailing list (of all places!), and in 
private emails among the participants in that thread.

After participating in that, and being mindful of Firefox/Mozilla's desire
to resist certs becoming yet-another way to silently track users, I offer
these thoughts.

1. We don't want this cert selection dialog to be seen so often that it 
becomes yet another dialog that users "click through" mindlessly.  
I think this argues that the default should be to remember the user's 
choice.  If the user does NOT want us to remember the choice, we should
honor that, too, but I wouldn't make that the default.

2. We want the "path of least resistance" (the shortest easiest way to 
dismiss the dialog) to be one that chooses to send no cert, rather than
being one that does send a cert.  The "fail safe" choice should be to 
send no cert.

3. The choice of sending no cert should be one of the choices in the list
of choices presented to the user.  Today, we present the user with a set
of certs from which to choose. If the user chooses any of them, we send a 
cert. If the user wants to choose "none of these", he must click "cancel", 
which is unintuitive.  Cancel seems to suggest stopping the connection and 
the request, not merely sending no cert.  So the choice of sending no cert 
should be in the list of choices.  

4. We should remember the decision to send no cert, just like we remember the decision to send any other cert.  

Taking the above points together, the choice of "send no cert" should be the 
default choice, the choice that is pre-selected in the list of choices when 
the dialog appears.  If the user wants to send a cert, he should pick one.  
But if he merely clicks OK, we should send no cert, and should remember that choice.

Comments?

Comment 14

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

I'll bet Dan wants to participate in this discussion, too.

Comment 16

[riedel]

> 4. We should remember the decision to send no cert, just like we remember
> the decision to send any other cert.  

This is really important!!! I now have to click away the dialog for every mail I send in thunderbird if I do not want to send the cert w/ my private email addresses to my employee.

Seems like Bug 135403 also addresses this.

Comment 17

[Kai Engert (:KaiE:)]

reassign bug owner.
mass-update-kaie-20120918

Comment 18

[Roberto V.]

I've patched my nightly in order to remove this dialog: it is really annoying.

Comment 19

[YF (Yang)]

I think the fixed in patch of bug 431819.

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-1.9.1/rev/fc3a742c4bf2#l2.25