Bug 300606 – please stabilise dev-libs/nss-3.12.5

• Status: RESOLVED FIXED
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description Gordon Pettey 2010-01-11 16:50:42 UTC]

http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/0b821db9a67e
"EV enablement for 6 roots. b=493709 r=kaie
WellsSecure, SECOM Trust, StartCom, SwissSign, Cybertrust, DigiNotar"

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=490495
"Enable Object Signing Trust Bit in NSS for the StartCom Certification Authority
Target Milestone: 	3.12.4"

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Use NSS <dev-libs/nss-3.12.4
2. Attempt to install mozilla-firefox extension signed by StartCom or any other listed CA
Actual Results:  
Installation fails

Expected Results:  
Installation succeeds

[Comment 1 Roland Ramthun 2010-01-15 13:10:07 UTC]

E.g. Adblock Plus uses the StartCom certificate, see https://adblockplus.org/en/changelog-1.1.2

This means until we stabilize >=dev-libs/nss-3.12.4 you can't install Adblock Plus on Gentoo anymore.

[Comment 2 Jory A. Pratt 2010-01-17 17:29:24 UTC]

3.12.5 is in the tree, it does have a fix included to handle security issue, all arches are advised to please mark stable.

[Comment 3 Christian Faulhammer (RETIRED) 2010-01-17 18:58:08 UTC]

x86 stable

[Comment 4 Jeroen Roovers (RETIRED) 2010-01-19 03:07:59 UTC]

Stable for HPPA.

[Comment 5 Christoph Brill (egore) (RESIGNED) 2010-01-19 08:59:00 UTC]

IMHO stabilizing 3.12.5 is not a good idea. It badly breaks user experience and we will get loads of bugs from it. From the release notes[1]:

"All SSL/TLS renegotiation is disabled by default in NSS 3.12.5. This will cause programs that attempt to perform renegotiation to experience failures where they formerly experienced successes, and is necessary for them to not be vulnerable, until such time as a new safe renegotiation scheme is standardized by the IETF."

If you define "secure == doesn't work", then everything is ok. It's a decision between a possible breakdown and a known breakdown. Just my 2 cents.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/NSS_3.12.5_release_notes

[Comment 6 Roland Ramthun 2010-01-19 12:17:40 UTC]

I'm sure it won't break "user experience badly". TLS renegotioation is not commonly used, usually with client X.509 certs.
Nearly all software using TLS has adopted this "fix" like nss, without a large number if complaints.

IETF proposes a solution, which has to be implemented in the future: http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-ietf-tls-renegotiation-03.txt

Until then it should be fine to simply disable TLS renegotiation, better than working with vulnerable (#2)/malfunctioning(#0,#1) libraries.

We should consider adding an einfo that renegotiation is now (temporarily) disabled.

[Comment 7 Brent Baude (RETIRED) 2010-01-20 02:27:36 UTC]

ppc64 stable

[Comment 8 Brent Baude (RETIRED) 2010-01-23 15:43:10 UTC]

ppc stable

[Comment 9 Raúl Porcel (RETIRED) 2010-01-30 19:00:07 UTC]

alpha/arm/ia64/sparc stable

[Comment 10 Pacho Ramos 2010-02-09 11:44:21 UTC]

amd64 stable