{"id":1664,"date":"2014-04-24T07:12:42","date_gmt":"2014-04-24T14:12:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/security\/?p=1664"},"modified":"2016-09-30T02:52:18","modified_gmt":"2016-09-30T09:52:18","slug":"exciting-updates-to-certificate-verification-in-gecko","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/security\/2014\/04\/24\/exciting-updates-to-certificate-verification-in-gecko\/","title":{"rendered":"Exciting Updates to Certificate Verification in Gecko"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today we&#8217;re excited to announce a new certificate verification library for Mozilla Products &#8211; mozilla::pkix! While most users will not notice a difference, the new library is more robust and maintainable. The new code is more robust because certificate path building attempts all potential trust chains for a certificate before giving up (acknowledging the fact that the certificate space is a cyclic directed graph and not a <a title=\"Graph Theory\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tree_%28graph_theory%29\" target=\"_blank\">forest<\/a>). The new implementation is also more maintainable, with only 4,167 lines of C++ code compared to the previous 81,865 lines of code which had been auto-translated from Java to C. The new library benefits from C++ functionality such as memory cleanup tools (e.g., <a title=\"RAII\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Resource_Acquisition_Is_Initialization\" target=\"_blank\">RAII<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>To provide some more background, Gecko has historically used the certificate verification processing in <a title=\"NSS\" href=\"https:\/\/developer.mozilla.org\/docs\/Mozilla\/Projects\/NSS \" target=\"_blank\">NSS<\/a> to ensure that the certificates presented during a TLS\/SSL handshake is valid. NSS currently has two code paths for doing certificate verification: &#8220;classic&#8221; used by Gecko for <a title=\"DV\" href=\"https:\/\/wiki.mozilla.org\/CA:Recommended_Practices#Verifying_Domain_Name_Ownership\" target=\"_blank\">Domain Validated (DV)<\/a> certificate verification, and libPKIX used by Gecko for <a title=\"EV\" href=\"https:\/\/cabforum.org\/about-ev-ssl\/ \" target=\"_blank\">Extended Validation (EV)<\/a> certificate verification. The NSS team has wanted to replace the &#8220;classic&#8221; verification with libPKIX for some time because libPKIX <a title=\"libPKIX bug\" href=\"https:\/\/bugzilla.mozilla.org\/show_bug.cgi?id=634074\" target=\"_blank\">handles cross-signed certificates better<\/a> and properly handles certificate policies required for <a title=\"EV\" href=\"https:\/\/cabforum.org\/about-ev-ssl\/ \" target=\"_blank\">Enhanced Validation (EV)<\/a> certificates. However, libPKIX has proven to be very difficult to work with.<\/p>\n<p>We also took the opportunity to enforce some requirements in <a title=\"Mozilla's CA Certificate Policy\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mozilla.org\/about\/governance\/policies\/security-group\/certs\/policy\/\" target=\"_blank\">Mozilla&#8217;s CA Certificate Policy<\/a> and in the <a title=\"Baseline Requirements\" href=\"https:\/\/cabforum.org\/baseline-requirements-documents\/\" target=\"_blank\">CA\/Browser Forum&#8217;s Baseline Requirements (BRs)<\/a>. The changes are listed <a title=\"Mozilla::pkix Behavior Changes\" href=\"https:\/\/wiki.mozilla.org\/SecurityEngineering\/mozpkix-testing#Behavior_Changes\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. While we have performed extensive compatibility testing, it is possible that your website certificate will no longer validate with Firefox 31. This should not be a problem if you use a certificate issued by one of the CAs in <a title=\"Mozilla's Included CAs\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mozilla.org\/about\/governance\/policies\/security-group\/certs\/included\/\" target=\"_blank\">Mozilla&#8217;s CA Program<\/a>, because they should already be issuing certificates according to Mozilla&#8217;s CA Certificate Policy and the BRs. If you notice an issue due to any of these changes, please <a title=\"Mozilla::pkix discussion in m.d.t.crypto\" href=\"https:\/\/groups.google.com\/d\/msg\/mozilla.dev.tech.crypto\/EbWse7Ryj8I\/mgNRW4yGAwU\" target=\"_blank\">let us know<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>We are looking for feedback with respect to compatibility and security. For compatibility, we ask all site operators and security testers to <a title=\"Request for Testing\" href=\"https:\/\/wiki.mozilla.org\/SecurityEngineering\/mozpkix-testing#Request_for_Testing\" target=\"_blank\">install Firefox 31<\/a> and use it to browse to your favorite sites. In addition, we ask for willing C++ programmers out there to review our code. This new mozilla::pkix library is located at <a title=\"security\/pkix\" href=\"https:\/\/mxr.mozilla.org\/mozilla-central\/source\/security\/pkix\/\" target=\"_blank\">security\/pkix<\/a> and <a title=\"security\/certverifier\" href=\"https:\/\/mxr.mozilla.org\/mozilla-central\/source\/security\/certverifier\/\" target=\"_blank\">security\/certverifier<\/a>. A more detailed description is <a title=\"mozpkix-testing\" href=\"https:\/\/wiki.mozilla.org\/SecurityEngineering\/mozpkix-testing\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. If you find an issue, please help us make it better by filing a <a title=\"mozilla::pkix bug report\" href=\"https:\/\/bugzilla.mozilla.org\/enter_bug.cgi?product=Core&amp;component=Security:%20PSM&amp;short_desc=%28mozilla::pkix%29\" target=\"_blank\">Bugzilla bug report<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>We look forward to your feedback on this new certificate verification library.<\/p>\n<p>Mozilla Security Engineering Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today we&#8217;re excited to announce a new certificate verification library for Mozilla Products &#8211; mozilla::pkix! While most users will not notice a difference, the new library is more robust and &hellip; <a class=\"go\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/security\/2014\/04\/24\/exciting-updates-to-certificate-verification-in-gecko\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1438,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,45538,69,45499],"tags":[45500,45499],"coauthors":[45546],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Exciting Updates to Certificate Verification in Gecko - Mozilla Security Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/security\/2014\/04\/24\/exciting-updates-to-certificate-verification-in-gecko\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"mozilla\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/security\/2014\/04\/24\/exciting-updates-to-certificate-verification-in-gecko\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/security\/2014\/04\/24\/exciting-updates-to-certificate-verification-in-gecko\/\",\"name\":\"Exciting Updates to Certificate Verification in Gecko - 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