58168 - Removed fixed-sized strings

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 67511

(NSS :: Libraries, defect, P3)

Description

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

from mozilla/security/nss/lib/softoken/fipstokn.c:
/* The next two strings must be exactly 64 characters long, with the
   first 32 characters meaningful  */
static char *slotDescription     = 
	"NSS Internal FIPS-140-1 Cryptographic Services                  ";
static char *privSlotDescription = 
	"NSS FIPS-140-1 User Private Key Services                        ";

(Or "Netscape" instead of "NSS")

This is failure-prone and makes it impossible to move the vendor name to a
central location. Change the source so that it can use the string, no matter
what size it has.

Comment 1

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

The fixed length of these strings is a requirement of a standard.
You can argue with the creators of the standard, if you like,
but the implementation is correct given the standard.

Comment 2

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Then please fulfill that requirement by filling the string programatically. E.g.
(pseudo-code)
if (privSlotDescription.Length > 33)
  privSlotDescription.Length = privSlotDescription.Length.First(33);
else
 privSlotDescription.Length = ' ' * (33 - privSlotDescription.Length);
REOPENing,

Comment 3

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

s/privSlotDescription.Length =/privSlotDescription =/
s/privSlotDescription.Length.First/privSlotDescription.First/

Comment 4

[Wan-Teh Chang]

Bob, is the requested change is necessary?
It seems that one can call PK11_ConfigureFIPS() to set
the slot descriptions for other vendors, so the
string literals are just the default values for the
slot descriptions.

Comment 5

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Making it easy to change those strings is important for reuse of the code by
other "vendors". It is a pain to change "Netscape" or "NSS" or whatever we
choose to the vendor name in 10 places, especially, if you have to count spaces
while doing so and risk uninitialized or overwritten memory, if you make a mistake.

Comment 6

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

BTW: Before you mark it WONTFIX, please reassing to me.

Comment 7

[Robert Relyea]

So there are a couple of things here:
1) What should the Default string be, and who is the correct vendor.

I believe NSS should be the correct default string. NSS is vendor nuetral -- it
stands for Network Security Services. There happens to be the mozilla version of
NSS, the netscape version of NSS, and the IPlanet version of NSS. The strings
NSS and Netscape are not interchangeable as the bug implies.

This is a PKCS #11 module and one can argue that the string should be
independent of the application.... However since this particular PKCS #11 module
happens to be statically bound to the application, one can argue that these
strings need to have the application's name, not the library's name. That is why
we added PK11_ConfigurePKCS11(). Mozilla can make these calls and build any
strings they want including any vendor values in those strings. The Library's
default strings should not change, however. Also note: these are not the only
strings controlled by PK11_ConfigurePKCS11() -- there are also strings in
pkcs11.c that are controlled by this call.

bob

Comment 8

[Robert Relyea]

Bug 67511 is a better description of the remaining issue in this bug, so I'm
closing this as a dup of that bug (even though this one is older). Hopefully
this will add Ben to the CC list of that bug.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 67511 ***

Comment 9

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Confirming.

> Hopefully this will add Ben to the CC list of that bug.

Bugzilla isn't that smart. Did it manually :-).