522780 - Improve description of untrusted certificate case when overriding

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Camino Graveyard :: Security, defect)

Description

[Stuart Morgan]

Split from bug 490188 comment 2
> The phrase in bug 453075 comment 3 ("not verified by a recognized authority")
> is just the text Firefox uses for the untrusted case that we use a more generic
> text (our InvalidCertMessageFormat) for.
> [...]
> we should [...] change our text post-2.0 to be more specific in the
> untrusted case.

Comment 1

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

This is the error that Ilya's site returned this morning.

The error page reports:

The certificate is not trusted because the issuer certificate is unknown.

(Error code: sec_error_unknown_issuer)

But the exception UI has vague "could not be verified" and the cert view UI has "is not trusted".

Indeed, the "VeriSign Class 3 Secure Server CA" does not appear in the list of CAs.

Comment 2

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Stuart, we currently use that string for two cases: "untrusted" http://mxr.mozilla.org/camino/source/camino/src/security/BrowserSecurityDialogs.mm#326 and a fallback http://mxr.mozilla.org/camino/source/camino/src/security/BrowserSecurityDialogs.mm#337

Do we want to leave InvalidCertMessageFormat for the fallback case, and write a new string for the more specific "untrusted" case ("not verified by a recognized authority" or whatever text we want)?  I don't know if there are more cases than the three we have defined and the fallback is a fallback for those other cases, or if there are only three cases and this is a fallback for "somehow we didn't get any error flags", so let's just say it's untrusted--although I suppose either way it's better to just say "could not be verified" rather than erroneously claim it's because of an unknown/untrusted CA.

Comment 3

[Stuart Morgan]

I don't remember which it is any more, but my comment sounds like I had decided it was just those cases, so we should in fact add a new, more specific string for untrusted.

Comment 4

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Attachment: Fix, v1.0

I attempted to go with a more friendly version of the Firefox string, explaining a little more to the user what was going on.  I'm not sure if I succeeded or not.  

We could also s/trusted/recognized/, but I chose "trusted" because NSS for whatever reasons includes ("recognizes") some CAs that aren't trusted (untrusted, expired, can't be verified).

I went with "Certificate Authority" because 1) we use that language elsewhere in the UI and 2) what in the heck is a "recognized authority"? "authority" on what? "recognized" by whom?

Ditto part 2 above on the inclusion of "Camino" in the string.

Comment 5

[Stuart Morgan]

Comment on attachment 459300 [details] [diff] [review]
Fix, v1.0

sr=smorgan

Comment 6

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

http://hg.mozilla.org/camino/rev/0c6356992ec5