741327 - Certificate selection modal dialog appears on wrong window

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: Security: PSM, defect, P3)

Description

[David Balažic]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:11.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/11.0
Build ID: 20120312181643

Steps to reproduce:

Start Firefox.


Actual results:

Saved session reopened a few windows and tabs in them. Some requiring a client certificate to be selected. The certificate selection dialog ("User Identification Request") is modal and appear on wrong window, delayed.
So it does not appear "in" the window containing the tab requiring it, but in other, unrelated window (the one I was using). Also, while the other Firefox windows appear to be usable while that dialog is displayed, they can not load any web page, as if all network communication is halted while the dialog is open.


Expected results:

Certificate dialog appears modal to the window containing the relevant web page.
Ideally only when the relevant tab is selected by user.

Comment 1

[David Balažic]

Also:
Expected results: Operation of other Firefox windows is not affected by the dialog.

Comment 2

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

This is likely because whatever is showing that dialog is either not passing a window to the prompt service or passing the active window, not the window the tab is in.

Comment 3

[David Balažic]

A similar thing happened again.
I had two FF windows open.
The first having 12 tabs, the second 2.
In the secnd window I installed Firebug (in tab 2, while tab 1 was showing a page that requires a certificate).

Upon restart of FF (due to Firebug), I got a dozen of certificate choice dialogs, one after another, then I noticed strange behavior on window 2:
 - does not load the current page
 - can not open new tabs
 - etc...
 - but when clicking the window close icon, I get a dialog claiming 16 tabs will be closed. Clicking "Close tabs" makes nothing (just dismisses the dialog).

During that window 1 works fine.

As window 2 didn't seem to be able to be resurrected (or closed) I opted to exit firefox )by selecting Exit in the menu of window 1.
After that another certificate dialog was revealed. It seems it was behind window 2 and was blocking its normal operation.
After dismissing it (by clicking Cancel), I tried to restart Firefox, but I got a dialog telling that Firefox process is already running.
After a minute I killed it with Task Manager.

Comment 4

[David Balažic]

PS: This was with Firefox 12.

Comment 5

[David Balažic]

And with v24.0 it is still the same.

Additionally: after selecting a certificate and the certificate dialog disappears the same story repeats with the master password dialog:
 - it appears "on a random FF window"
 - until it is not closed (and I had to search thru dozen FF windows to find it) all FF windows are "dead" (as described above, except now I can open new tabs, they just can't load anything)

Comment 6

[David Balažic]

Still happening with v43.0.4

Test case:
 - create new profile
 - start FF with new profile
 - open another FF window
 - in the second window open some tabs, optionally with some websites in them
 - in first window go to https://www.bennish.net/certs/
 - click the item (2) to get a client certificate
 - then click item (3) to get a certificate selection dialog
 - try to use the second window

Result:
The second window work GUI-wise (javascript in pages also work), but network connections hang.

Comment 7

[Dana Keeler (she/her) [:keeler]]

See bug 674483 comment 6.

Comment 8

[David Balažic]

FYI, this just happened again on FF 103.0

I opened a Private Window and
opened a web page that requires a client certificate

Result: the cert selection dialog appeared as a modal dialog tied to the other firefox window (probably the one I used to open the private window)

This all behind foreground windows, so there was no visible indication, why the page was not loading (just a spinner). Also all other tabs (private and regular) stopped all network traffic, which is another known issue.