91416 - user-friendly names should handle case where there's no CN field

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core Graveyard :: Security: UI, enhancement, P2)

Description

[thomask]

I have created a certificate with the following subject name

UID=thomask,dc=iplanet,dc=com.

In the Manage certificate dialog of NS61PR1, it shows:

's netscape ID

Wouldnt it be nicer to display just thomask or even
UID=thomask,dc=iplanet,dc=com.

The user-friendly name building logic may just print the
subject if a user-friendly name cannot be built.

Comment 1

[Stephane Saux]

->future
P2

Comment 2

[John Unruh]

Mass assigning QA to ckritzer.

Comment 3

[John Unruh]

May I suggest wontfix? Reporter, you may have the world's only cert without a 
CN.

Comment 4

[thomask]

The subject name can have anything there according to the X509
standard. CN is not a mandatory field. The subject name is
determined by the certificate authority or the issuer. So really,
it can be anything as long as it is in the format of name=value,
name=value,...

I will not be suprised to see PKI deployment where CN is not
present in user certificates.

If you look at Microsoft's Certificate management, they handle
it as follows:

Subject Name                           Pretty Print Name
----------------------------------------------------------
UID=thomask                            thomask
E=[e-mail]                 [e-mail]
CN=Thomas Kwan                         Thomas Kwan
UID=thomask,CN = Thomas Kwan,...       Thomas Kwan

Comment 5

[John G. Myers]

Mass reassign ssaux bugs to nobody

Comment 6

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

Mass change "Future" target milestone to "--" on bugs that now are assigned to
nobody.  Those targets reflected the prioritization of past PSM management.
Many of these should be marked invalid or wontfix, I think.

Comment 7

[Dana Keeler (she/her) (use needinfo) [:keeler] (on leave)]

From what I can tell, the browser will default to "Imported Certificate" if it can't figure out a reasonable name. This is probably the best we can do without putting significant effort into attempting to come up with something based on properties that may or may not be present and may or may not be relevant or even human-readable.