Changes/NSSLoadP11KitModules

NSS load p11-kit modules by default

Summary

When NSS database is created, PKCS#11 modules configured in the system's p11-kit will be automatically registered and visible to NSS applications.

Owner

• Name: Daiki Ueno
• Email: dueno@redhat.com
• Release notes owner:

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora 29
• Last updated: 2018-06-02
• Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

Fedora provides a mechanism to configure PKCS#11 modules system wide, allowing the crypto libraries (GnuTLS and OpenSSL) to use PKCS#11 modules in a consistent manner. Until now NSS applications haven't benefit from it as NSS uses a different configuration mechanism which requires users to register PKCS#11 modules in NSS databases. This change makes the manual procedure unnecessary, by registering the p11-kit-proxy module (the aggregator of the system PKCS#11 modules) by default. That way, NSS provides a consistent user experience with other crypto libraries.

See also:

• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1173577

Benefit to Fedora

This change allows NSS applications to use PKCS#11 modules in the same way as other crypto libraries. That improves user experience of smartcards and HSMs on Fedora.

Scope

• Proposal owners:
  • Modify the crypto-policies package to enable p11-kit-proxy in the newly created NSS database.
  • Make sure that this change doesn't cause any regression with the existing applications.

• Other developers: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

• Release engineering: #Releng issue number (a check of an impact with Release Engineering is needed)
  • List of deliverables: N/A

• Policies and guidelines: PackageMaintainers/PKCS11 needs changes basically to eliminate NSS specific stuff

• Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

Upgrade/compatibility impact

If the user previously used a conflicting configuration, such as using p11-kit-proxy as a replacement of p11-kit-trust, it will stop working.

How To Test

1. install a PKCS#11 module, say softhsm2
2. create an NSS database
3. list modules registered to the NSS database, and check that there is softhsm2

User Experience

NSS application users are no longer required to register PKCS#11 module manually.

Dependencies

firefox, and possibly sssd's smartcard support

Contingency Plan

• Contingency mechanism: Revert the change in crypto-policies
• Contingency deadline: Beta freeze
• Blocks release? No
• Blocks product? No

Documentation

None (the existing documentation needs to be changed to not mention the special case of NSS)

Release Notes

It should be sufficient to have a simple sentence mentioning this change.