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: 2019-08-29
• Tracker bug: #1592206
• Release Notes tracking: #184

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) in NSS databases with the default configuration.

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, bringing consistency in PKCS#11 driver registration across the OS. That improves user experience of smartcards and HSMs on Fedora.

Scope

• Proposal owners:
  • Enable p11-kit-proxy in the newly created NSS database, through the crypto-policies package.
  • Modify the opensc package not to register itself to the NSS database upon installation.

• Other developers:
  • Make sure that this change doesn't cause any regression with the existing applications.

• Release engineering: #7548
  • 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

Uncommon/undocumented scenarios may be affected, in particular if the user previously used a configuration which conflicts with this change. In addition to that, support for the third party / proprietary PKCS#11 modules is out of scope of this proposal. That is, if the user had previously installed a p11-kit configuration file for such modules, it could stop working. Even then, she can remove the configuration file and manually register the module through the application (e.g., Firefox's preferences).

• bugzilla.redhat.com - 2019-08-27 p11-kit-trust breaks pkcs11 client-certificate authentication with Firefox

How To Test

1. Install a PKCS#11 module, say softhsm or opensc. These modules should be ready to use after installing the packages with DNF. To use them as HSM you need to initialize a token with softhsm2-util or attach a hardware device supported by OpenSC, such as Nitrokey (see the wiki for details).
2. Start Firefox and check if the module is listed in Preferences -> Privacy & Security -> Security Devices...
3. Create an NSS database: certutil -d sql:nssdb -N --empty-password
4. List modules registered to the NSS database: modutil -dbdir sql:nssdb -list
5. Check that the output includes the PKCS#11 module installed on the step 1:

   Listing of PKCS #11 Modules
   -----------------------------------------------------------
     1. NSS Internal PKCS #11 Module
   	   uri: pkcs11:library-manufacturer=Mozilla%20Foundation;library-description=NSS%20Internal%20Crypto%20Services;library-version=3.36
   	 slots: 2 slots attached
   	status: loaded
   
   [...]
   
     2. p11-kit-proxy
   	library name: p11-kit-proxy.so
   	   uri: pkcs11:library-manufacturer=PKCS%2311%20Kit;library-description=PKCS%2311%20Kit%20Proxy%20Module;library-version=1.1
   	 slots: 5 slots attached
   	status: loaded
   [...]
   	 slot: SoftHSM slot ID 0x0
   	token: 
   	  uri: pkcs11:manufacturer=SoftHSM%20project;model=SoftHSM%20v2
   -----------------------------------------------------------

User Experience

The users of NSS applications (e.g. firefox and sssd) would be able to use supported smartcards and HSMs without further configuration.

Dependencies

firefox, and possibly sssd's smartcard support

Contingency Plan

• Contingency mechanism: Revert the change in nss, p11-kit, or crypto-policies
• Contingency deadline: Beta freeze
• Blocks release? No
• Blocks product? No

Documentation

No new documentation needed, but the existing documentation should be modified to remove the special cases of NSS.

Release Notes

It should be sufficient to have a simple sentence mentioning this change and how to opt-out from it.

• Release Notes tracking: #184