420293 - [Security] Unclear when navigation bar shows "Verified by"

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

Description

[Andreas Goetz]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b4pre) Gecko/2008022604 Minefield/3.0b4pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b4pre) Gecko/2008022604 Minefield/3.0b4pre

Navigating multiple SSL sites I was puzzled that for some, the navigation bar shows "verified by...", e.g. VA. For some it doesn't.
In both cases, status bar shows "authenticated by..." This gives the strange impressino that both types of sites are different levels of trust- is that true?

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
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Comment 1

[Andreas Goetz]

Attachment: verified by example

Comment 2

[Andreas Goetz]

Attachment: no "verified by" example

Comment 3

[Johnathan Nightingale [:johnath]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> In both cases, status bar shows "authenticated by..." This gives the strange
> impressino that both types of sites are different levels of trust- is that
> true?

Basically, yeah. :)  Companies like VA software have gone to extra hassle to obtain a kind of certificate which has extra processes in place to confirm the identity claims made, and Firefox recognizes these certificates as providing a higher quality of information.  The encryption is no more or less strong, just the identity information.  These are known as Extended Validation certificates.

By design, and not security sensitive -- removing flag, marking WONTFIX.