NSS/Demos

Team

Introduction

The team for this project is composed of the Mozilla Advisors Franziskus Kiefer and Tim Taubert, Professor Martin Schmiedecker and the developer Stefan Gschiel. Prof. Schmiedecker is professor and researcher at the security institute SBA Research at the Vienna University of Technology. Stefan Gschiel has received his bachelor's degree in Software and Information Engineering from the Vienna University of Technology in this year. He is doing this project as part of his Project in Software Engineering and Internet Computing master course.

Members

• Stefan Gschiel
• Professor: Dr. Martin Schmiedecker
• Mozilla Advisors: Franziskus Kiefer, Tim Taubert

Project

Description

Using the NSS library for tasks like creating certificates from the commandline isn't the easiest job to do, since there are many tiny tools only covering parts of NSS's functionality. The goal of this project is to develop a commandline tool incorporating the functionality of the nss library similar to the openssl tool[1]. So tasks like creating certificates should be made more easier for a user.

Scope

At present it is limited to implementing the new NSS commandline tool. Subsequently, documentation will be created in order to see how certain parts of the NSS library could be used.

Goals

• Implement new NSS commandline tool integrating functionality from existing tools like certutil
• Improve the usability compared to the old tools
• Functional Tests
• Good Documentation

Updates

Present Status

• Implementation of NSS tool (work in progress)
• Source Code (development repos)[1][2]
• Public Workpad : https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/mwos-demos
• Google sheet listing "old" NSS command line tools: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bELiYF6VKvPPqQaZKbRW6_eM3Zxzej-nBrnTKMfuuWs/edit?usp=sharing
• Google doc for (possible) functionality of the NSS tool: https://docs.google.com/document/d/100RU81-I_o2rKyAxUrbwC8MC6FhoS-Z8HgywgdFA_5I/edit?usp=sharing
• Google doc listing some of the "old" NSS command line tools with usage: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZJuzUZ-_ZYPnH4n42pvf2NmC3_BdtM5m8nRIzpevV10/edit?usp=sharing

2017-01-13

• First version of new "nss" tool finished

2016-10-24

• Decided to write patches against NSS (e.g. the NSS tool will be part of the NSS repo)
• Use Phabricator and arcanist for the patches

2016-10-17

• Discussed current project status
• Looked at how the nss command could look like
• Decided to use C++11 for implementation
• Decided to use command line arguments with long options (no short options)
• Use gyp[3] as build system, e.g. integrate tool in NSS's new build system

2016-10-10

Kick off meeting: Orientation, discussion of project outline

<date>

• current work
• blocking points
• discussion points
• upcoming work

References

[1] https://www.openssl.org/docs/manmaster/apps/openssl.html