Re: (ITS#6589) Patch - Mozilla NSS - support use of self signed CA certs as server certs

[rmeggins@redhat.com]

Howard Chu wrote:
> rmeggins@redhat.com wrote:
>> Full_Name: Rich Megginson
>> Version: 2.4.23
>> OS: Fedora
>> URL: 
>> ftp://ftp.openldap.org/incoming/openldap-2.4.23-selfsignedcacert-20100714.patch 
>>
>> Submission from: (NULL) (76.113.111.209)
>>
>>
>> MozNSS doesn't like self-signed CA certs that are also used for
>> TLS/SSL server certs (such as generated by openssl req -x509)
>> CERT_VerifyCertificateNow returns SEC_ERROR_UNTRUSTED_ISSUER in that 
>> case
>> so, see if the cert and issuer are the same cert, and allow the
>> use of it (with a warning)
>
> If you checked to see if the issuer is already trusted, I guess the 
> patch is OK.
>
> But that aside, MozNSS's behavior sounds correct to me, and our 
> documentation says to use explicit CA certs, separate from the server 
> cert. Is it really a good idea to break this validation check?
Probably not, but openssl seems to allow it.  This provides parity with 
the openssl implementation.

This issue came up when testing openldap with NSS support in Fedora.  
The Fedora package creates a self signed CA cert using openssl req 
-x509.  This works with openldap+openssl, but fails with openldap+moznss.
>
> Also, where does this check occur in the main sequence of verification 
> - has the BasicConstraints, KeyUsage, and/or NetscapeCertType already 
> been checked successfully?
Yes.  This check occurs in the cert chain processing, which is done last.
>
>> This patch file is derived from OpenLDAP Software. All of the
>> modifications to OpenLDAP Software represented in the following
>> patch(es) were developed by Red Hat. Red Hat has not assigned rights
>> and/or interest in this work to any party. I, Rich Megginson am
>> authorized by Red Hat, my employer, to release this work under the
>> following terms.
>>
>> Red Hat hereby place the following modifications to OpenLDAP Software
>> (and only these modifications) into the public domain. Hence, these
>> modifications may be freely used and/or redistributed for any purpose
>> with or without attribution and/or other notice.
>