634697 - Remember user's client certificate selection across sessions

Status: ASSIGNED

(Core :: Security: PSM, enhancement, P1)

Description

[Tomáš]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0b11) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0b11
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0b11) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0b11

When page requires user certificate for https connection, the dialog for selecting right certificate comes every time after browser restart, although, option at the bottom of dialog to remember my choice was previously selected. (certificate is already successfully imported in browser)

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
0.Goto site configured for https connection requiring user certificate, select right certificate and mark checkbox to remember this choice in the dialog, continue.

1.Restart Firefox
2.Goto site configured for https connection requiring user certificate
Actual Results:  
The dialog for selecting certificate shows up again.


Expected Results:  
Firefox should connect to the site without any inquiries about selecting certificate.

Comment 1

[Tomáš]

Attachment: Screenshot of dialog (czech language)

Comment 2

[:Ms2ger (he/him; ⌚ UTC+1/+2)]

Adg asked to have this bug assigned to them.

Comment 3

[Aman Deep Gautam]

I was not able to reproduce the bug on Firefox/4.0b11 as told. If you check the button corresponding to the "permanently store this exception" firefox successfully remembers->options->advanced->encryption->view certificates->servers.

Comment 4

[u279076]

Tomas, can you try to reproduce this with the latest nightly Firefox 4.0b12pre?  Thanks.

Comment 5

[Tomáš]

I can confirm, that FF 4.0b12 (not nightly) is still behaving as described before.

Also when the dialog for choosing the certificate is canceled it won't come back after attempt for another connection to the server.

----
Firefox 4.0b12 
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0b12) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0b12

Comment 6

[Tomáš]

(In reply to comment #3)
> I was not able to reproduce the bug on Firefox/4.0b11 as told. If you check the
> button corresponding to the "permanently store this exception" firefox
> successfully remembers->options->advanced->encryption->view
> certificates->servers.

The certificate is client-side so the exception dialog in: options->advanced->encryption->view certificates->servers
is not useful cause there is no server URL to remember the exception for.

The dialog I described is IMHO shown at very rare circumstances as for professional use mostly.. But still used.. 

It's just a glitch with lower importance..

Comment 7

[u279076]

Adding Paul to the cc list of this bug. Paul, is there some interaction with Session Store that could be causing this bug?

Tomas, would it be possible for you to either link or attach a test case we can use to try to reproduce this bug?

Comment 8

[Paul O'Shannessy [:zpao] (not reading much bugmail, email directly)]

(In reply to comment #7)
> Adding Paul to the cc list of this bug. Paul, is there some interaction with
> Session Store that could be causing this bug?

Session Restore doesn't do anything with certs, so highly unlikely.

Comment 9

[mm.bugzilla]

I also have this problem with an Aladdin E-Token.

Comment 10

[Gero]

I had the same 'issue' as described above, but I recognized the flag "Options->Advanced->Encryption->Certificates - When a site asks for a certificate:" (or similar, using German version). I switched from "Ask everytime" to "Select one automatically".
However, I'm not sure what this means exactlly does - in my opinion this misses a third option like "Ask only if new" or something. Maybe "Ask everytime" just ignores already stored site-cert associations?

---
Firefox 7.0.1 (German)
Win 7 x64

Comment 11

[Tim Berners-Lee]

I have been annoyed by this problem for years, mentioned in in talks, discussed it with Anne van K in the TAG, and general taken it as indicating a lack of interest at Mozilla in client-side certs.   (Chrome does not have this problem, and so is easier to use if you use client certs a lot.)  At least from the discussion here it seems to be recognized as  bug -- but has a status of "UNCONFIRMED" surprises me.  So maybe it difficult to reproduce.  If it is supposed to work, where is the site->cert mapping stored?

Comment 12

[Dana Keeler (she/her) (use needinfo) (:keeler for reviews)]

For what it's worth, I can reproduce the bug. You're right that client-side certificate-related features aren't a high priority right now, since the majority of our users don't use them. It's unfortunate, but limited engineering resources mean we can't address everything we might want to.

Comment 13

[Ikonta]

Sufficient support of client certificates is one of the reasons, I use FireFox.

(In reply to Tim Berners-Lee from comment #11)
> So maybe it difficult to reproduce.

To my experience reproduction of this issue requires not very typical configuration: it need user, having several the same time valid client certificates in a certification chain. That, as I know, is not typical.
In the rest cases auto-fit client certificate works rather well.

(In reply to David Keeler [:keeler] (use needinfo?) from comment #12)
> For what it's worth, I can reproduce the bug. You're right that client-side
> certificate-related features aren't a high priority right now, since the
> majority of our users don't use them. It's unfortunate, but limited
> engineering resources mean we can't address everything we might want to.

Orienting on popularity NOW you can miss future.
Support of client certificates is not widely spread (yet?), but very _important_ (!) feature.

This feature (client certificates) is lessly used, than it should, because of insufficient support in clients.
And is lessly supported because of rare use.

P.S. Not long ago I've generate a certificate set for localhost to reproduce this issue.
If Mozilla developers need, I can attach these certs to this bug and, if necessary, consult in configuration of Apache web server (although it seems to be trivial).

Comment 15

[Dana Keeler (she/her) (use needinfo) (:keeler for reviews)]

This bug could have a more straightforward summary.

Comment 17

[Greg Colyer]

Ref. my reply to related Thunderbird bug 803975 comment #6

In the present context, does the behaviour happen even if the preference "Ask me every time" is not selected?

In any case there is still Tim Berners-Lee's question in comment #11:
> If it is supposed to work, where is the site->cert mapping stored?

Comment 21

[David Balažic]

Starting a few FF versions ago, now (v57.0.4) the "Remember this decision" doesn't work even in the same session (no restarts in between). After a while FF will ask the user to select a certificate for a site for which the user already selected it.

A related question is: what is the difference between enabling or disabling "Remember this decision" ? In a quick test it seems there is no difference. In both cases the choice is remembered (for a while).

(In reply to Tim Berners-Lee from comment #11)
> I have been annoyed by this problem for years
or for decades

> taken it as indicating a lack of interest at Mozilla in client-side certs.
Apparently. The subpar (to put it mildly) support in browsers drives both users and developers to abandon using certificates for client authentication and use other less secure alternatives.
Which the makes browser developers say: But look, nobody uses this stuff anyway...

> So maybe it difficult to reproduce.
Nope, it happens every time, reliably.

Comment 22

[DvD]

I can also confirm that this still doesn't work. Working on a site with a single page application now forces me to select the certificate on each server interaction, even though I selected "Remember this decision".

Comment 23

[Rik]

The problem is that in recent versions the certificate exception get deleted along with other data when "Site preferences" is checked in "Clear history".
That's quite bad.
Even going in privacy & security --> view certificates --> servers --> add exception
the other servers already present there stay, the custom ones get deleted.

In Firefox Developer Edition, having this limitation is very bad because I use to delete everything quite often to make tests, and my LAN certificate has to be confirmed as a new exception day after day! :-( :-( :-( :-(

It was better as it was before.
I haven't found any workaround yet.

Comment 24

[Moritz Birghan [:mbirghan]]

Attachment: Bug 634697 - Remember user's client certificate selection across sessions

Comment 25

[David Balažic]

(In reply to Tomáš from comment #6)

(In reply to comment #3)
The dialog I described is IMHO shown at very rare circumstances as for
professional use mostly.. But still used..

No, it happens to everyone who uses certificates* to do their taxes online, access their bank account etc.

• even with a single installed certificate, the dialog is shown each time

Comment 26

[Moritz Birghan [:mbirghan]]

Attachment: Bug 634697 - Remember user's client certificate selection across sessions

Comment 27

[Matthias Radde]

Found this bugzilla-entry by googleing for a solution for my problem - I have two client-certificates - one already expired and one is valid.
By default the already expired certificate is selected (due to the lower serial-number?) which is annoying because no error-message is displayed if I try to connect to the server with this expired client-cert - just an empty page. Checked with the webdeveloper-tools - there is a message that is at least a hint for the error that just occured ("SSL_ERROR_EXPIRED_CERT_ALERT").
And yes - I checked the "remeber this decision" for the valid client-cert with the higher serial-number. But after a browser-restart the expired certificate is the default-selection again.
Yes - the workaround would be to remove the expired client-cert from Firefox' certificate-store. But a workaround does not eliminate a bug ;-)

If I can help with some testing from user's side (as I am "only" a webdeveloper and webserver-admin, not a Firefox-programmer) I will be happy to do so.

Comment 28

[Moritz Birghan [:mbirghan]]

Attachment: Bug 634697 - Add permanent storage to user's client certificate selection

Depends on D54336

Comment 29

[Moritz Birghan [:mbirghan]]

Attachment: Bug 634697 - Refactoring nsClientAuthRememberService to work as a service

Depends on D54336

Comment 30

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/a538b0497336
Refactoring nsClientAuthRememberService to work as a service r=keeler

Comment 31

[Stefan Hindli [:stefan_hindli]]

Backed out changeset a538b0497336 (Bug 634697) for causing android build bustages in /builds/worker/workspace/build/src/security/manager/ssl/nsNSSComponent.cpp CLOSED TREE

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=autoland&fromchange=c572e0307a58272cc5f04320cd1d9a75a5018704&searchStr=android%2C5.0%2Cx86-64%2Casan%2Cbuild-android-x86_64-asan-fuzzing%2Fopt%2C%28bof%29&selectedJob=290853789

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/logviewer.html#/jobs?job_id=290853789&repo=autoland&lineNumber=33084

Comment 32

[Pulsebot]

Backout by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/4143bf08dfe6
Backed out changeset a538b0497336 for causing android build bustages in /builds/worker/workspace/build/src/security/manager/ssl/nsNSSComponent.cpp CLOSED TREE

Comment 33

[Dana Keeler (she/her) (use needinfo) (:keeler for reviews)]

Moritz - when you fix the build issues, let's land this in a new bug so that the original purpose of this bug doesn't get lost.

Comment 34

[Phabricator Automation]

Comment on attachment 9126100 [details]
Bug 634697 - Refactoring nsClientAuthRememberService to work as a service

Revision D62585 was moved to bug 1618710. Setting attachment 9126100 [details] to obsolete.

Comment 35

[Phabricator Automation]

Comment on attachment 9110916 [details]
Bug 634697 - Remember user's client certificate selection across sessions

Revision D54336 was moved to bug 1620976. Setting attachment 9110916 [details] to obsolete.

Comment 36

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Dana, it looks like this new data storage could effectively be used as a source for (abridged) browser history and should come under our regular data clearing mechanisms, so that "clear recent history...", "forget about this site", the forget button and other mechanisms we have clear the data when the user chooses to do that. Can that happen here, or if not, would you mind filing a follow-up bug to hook this all into nsIClearDataService, if that's not already part of the patches here? That way we don't end up creating a privacy liability when fixing this bug. Thank you!

Comment 37

[Dana Keeler (she/her) (use needinfo) (:keeler for reviews)]

Yes, that can happen here. Thanks for the reminder!