454107 - Cert download failures are silent - no warning or error display

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Security: PSM, defect, P5)

Description

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

Bug 453227 reported that cert downloads were failing silently.  
The cause of that particular failure was an NSS regression that caused
a good certificate download to be treated by NSS as a bad download.

But NSS's routine that processes those downloads, 
CERT_DecodeCertPackage reports a failure status to its caller, 
nsNSSCertificateDB::getCertsFromPackage, yet that failure return value
does not cause any UI to be displayed telling the user about the failure.
The failure is SILENT, from a UI perspective.

This bug report says: those failures should not be silent.  The user should
be told: the server tried to download one or more certificates, and that
failed.

Comment 1

[Eddy Nigg (StartCom)]

The user should be told: Installation of one or more certificates failed. Please contact the site operator to report this incident.

(The server doesn't download a certificate, it's the client (browser) which downloads it. Second, at this stage it's clear that a certificates was supposed to be installed into the browser's security device.

Alternatively use "Import" instead of "Installation".)

Comment 2

[Eddy Nigg (StartCom)]

Another correction: Please contact the site operator *and* report this incident.

Comment 3

[Kai Engert [:KaiE:]]

reassign bug owner.
mass-update-kaie-20120918