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One major criticism of Firefox having its own roots was that it made life harder for rolling out custom roots in a corporate setting. You couldn't just use the

by est31 6y ago

One major criticism of Firefox having its own roots was that it made life harder for rolling out custom roots in a corporate setting. You couldn't just use the OS provided means to distribute these roots, you had to use a Firefox specific way to add them. I guess this has similar implications for Chrome as well... Overall I'm in favour of this change though. Especially on Linux, distros haven't really proven to be good guardians of the root store. See the cons section in the rustls-native-certs readme: https://github.com/ctz/rustls-native-certs#should-i-use-this-or-webpki-roots https://github.com/ctz/rustls-native-certs#should-i-use-this...

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Firefox has a single policy setting to use the OSes root store.
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  It could be said that having to configure/test/deploy/maintain an "enterprise policy" for any given application is, technically, more work than not having to specify a policy for that application. The number of settings involved isn't strictly relevant to the difficulty of specifying a per-application policy, though it's certainly an opportunity for further complications!
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    If you're deploying Firefox to begin with you can easily add this setting to your deploy system. If you aren't, then you probably don't have a customized CA policy.
rockwotj 6y ago
It seems the mkcert tool supports chrome and I believe Google has its own certs internally, so there's gotta be a way to do this - although it may be tied up with gsuite.
sleevi 6y ago
https://g.co/chrome/root-policy https://g.co/chrome/root-policy , which is linked to in that mail, states in the third paragraph: > If you’re an enterprise managing trusted CAs for your organization, including locally installed enterprise CAs, the policies described in this document do not apply to your CA. No changes are currently planned for how enterprise administrators manage those CAs within Chrome. CAs that have been installed by the device owner or administrator into the operating system trust store are expected to continue to work as they do today.
- est31 6y ago
  > CAs that have been installed by the device owner or administrator into the operating system trust store are expected to continue to work as they do today. Huh that's a really cool idea. I wonder how it's implemented, as it might be useful for the rustls-native-certs crate as well... Edit: found it: Apparently there is a bool field is_issued_by_known_root that gets set by the differerent backends. https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/net/+/2f965222e5a39c960b1cc8c854025cb90eeb330a/cert/cert_verify_result.h#98 https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/net/+/2f96522...
  - sleevi 6y ago
    No, that’s not it: none of the code has landed yet It’s a big enough change that we’re explaining before landing. We’re taking an approach similar to Firefox’s implementation ( https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/security/manager/ssl/EnterpriseRoots.cpp https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/security/manage... ), which I helped advise on in the long ago days. It may end up using like that bool, but if you read through the commit history for how that code in Chrome works, you can see there are a lot of sharp edges.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - jiggawatts 6y ago
      Firefox does Enterprise PKI wrong though. Very thoroughly wrong. It only reads in the Root CA certificates in the Machine store. It ignores the User store entirely. It ignores the Intermediate CA store as well. I bet Mozilla's logic is that Intermediate CA certificates can simply be "downloaded" dynamically, but Windows Server CAs use LDAP URLs by default, which Firefox doesn't support. It also ignores CTLs, CRLs, revoked certificates, and a bunch of other Windows PKI stores. Chrome was pleasant to use in that "it just worked", and this was a major reason it was adopted by large organisations and Firefox wasn't. Please don't break this.
AviationAtom 6y ago
There was talk about how the expiration of Let's Encrypt's intermediate cert at the end of the year will have ramifications, as Let's Encrypt's root cert is not included in older versions of Android, which much of the developing world makes use of. The suggested fix was that they download Firefox, due to it staying updated on older versions of Android, in addition to having it's own certificate store.
silly-silly 6y ago
Why havn't they been good guardians ?
- est31 6y ago
  IDK they are volunteers and I respect their work. But they don't follow Mozilla as quickly as one could follow when it comes to removing CAs. E.g. in June 2019, Mozilla removed the Certinomis CA [0], but it took until June 2020 until Debian released a new version that had the CA removed [1] (version 20200601 of the ca-certificates package). [0]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1552374 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1552374 [1]: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=956411 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=956411
  - jart 6y ago
    My read here is that Debian was asked to upgrade ca-certificates in April 2020 and they rolled out an update within two weeks. That sounds reasonable. I'd be more concerned about Mozilla. Why did they include the Certinomis CA in the first place? I did a Google search and it appears to be a small business in France that's owned by a stamp printing company. They should totally have the power to read my emails. Quick grep of Mozilla root file tells me they grant 138 different companies root access to SSL. Why do we need that many people trying to make a buck selling prime numbers online? It's gonzo.
deepstack 6y ago
In some ways I get why software developers want to roll their own CA, less dependancy on the OS. There are several times when I visit a web site using latest browser, but get an error while viewing a SSL page because OS CA is too old, and there is no way to upgrade it. I'm talking win xp days of course. But yeah why rely on the OS. EDIT: kinda like how node_module thing got started in the first place. But I can see how this can turn into another browser war with Google and Mozilla each starting to bundle their own CA bundles. God, can we just please have DHT type for Root CA already?
m-p-3 6y ago
One benefit from this is that some Android versions aren't receiving updated root certs anymore, and older ones will encounter issues when browsing secured websites using LetsEncrypt.[1] Because Firefox stores its own root store it is unaffected by this, and Chrome will likely be unaffected to when this change happens. [1]: https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/11/07/many-websites-will-stop-working-on-older-android-versions-in-2021/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/11/07/many-websites-will-...

by est31 6y ago

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

Firefox has a single policy setting to use the OSes root store.

floatingatoll 6y ago
It could be said that having to configure/test/deploy/maintain an "enterprise policy" for any given application is, technically, more work than not having to specify a policy for that application. The number of settings involved isn't strictly relevant to the difficulty of specifying a per-application policy, though it's certainly an opportunity for further complications!
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  If you're deploying Firefox to begin with you can easily add this setting to your deploy system. If you aren't, then you probably don't have a customized CA policy.

rockwotj 6y ago

It seems the mkcert tool supports chrome and I believe Google has its own certs internally, so there's gotta be a way to do this - although it may be tied up with gsuite.

sleevi 6y ago

https://g.co/chrome/root-policy https://g.co/chrome/root-policy , which is linked to in that mail, states in the third paragraph: > If you’re an enterprise managing trusted CAs for your organization, including locally installed enterprise CAs, the policies described in this document do not apply to your CA. No changes are currently planned for how enterprise administrators manage those CAs within Chrome. CAs that have been installed by the device owner or administrator into the operating system trust store are expected to continue to work as they do today.

est31 6y ago
> CAs that have been installed by the device owner or administrator into the operating system trust store are expected to continue to work as they do today. Huh that's a really cool idea. I wonder how it's implemented, as it might be useful for the rustls-native-certs crate as well... Edit: found it: Apparently there is a bool field is_issued_by_known_root that gets set by the differerent backends. https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/net/+/2f965222e5a39c960b1cc8c854025cb90eeb330a/cert/cert_verify_result.h#98 https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/net/+/2f96522...
- sleevi 6y ago
  No, that’s not it: none of the code has landed yet It’s a big enough change that we’re explaining before landing. We’re taking an approach similar to Firefox’s implementation ( https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/security/manager/ssl/EnterpriseRoots.cpp https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/security/manage... ), which I helped advise on in the long ago days. It may end up using like that bool, but if you read through the commit history for how that code in Chrome works, you can see there are a lot of sharp edges.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - jiggawatts 6y ago
    Firefox does Enterprise PKI wrong though. Very thoroughly wrong. It only reads in the Root CA certificates in the Machine store. It ignores the User store entirely. It ignores the Intermediate CA store as well. I bet Mozilla's logic is that Intermediate CA certificates can simply be "downloaded" dynamically, but Windows Server CAs use LDAP URLs by default, which Firefox doesn't support. It also ignores CTLs, CRLs, revoked certificates, and a bunch of other Windows PKI stores. Chrome was pleasant to use in that "it just worked", and this was a major reason it was adopted by large organisations and Firefox wasn't. Please don't break this.

AviationAtom 6y ago

There was talk about how the expiration of Let's Encrypt's intermediate cert at the end of the year will have ramifications, as Let's Encrypt's root cert is not included in older versions of Android, which much of the developing world makes use of. The suggested fix was that they download Firefox, due to it staying updated on older versions of Android, in addition to having it's own certificate store.

silly-silly 6y ago

Why havn't they been good guardians ?

est31 6y ago
IDK they are volunteers and I respect their work. But they don't follow Mozilla as quickly as one could follow when it comes to removing CAs. E.g. in June 2019, Mozilla removed the Certinomis CA [0], but it took until June 2020 until Debian released a new version that had the CA removed [1] (version 20200601 of the ca-certificates package). [0]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1552374 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1552374 [1]: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=956411 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=956411
- jart 6y ago
  My read here is that Debian was asked to upgrade ca-certificates in April 2020 and they rolled out an update within two weeks. That sounds reasonable. I'd be more concerned about Mozilla. Why did they include the Certinomis CA in the first place? I did a Google search and it appears to be a small business in France that's owned by a stamp printing company. They should totally have the power to read my emails. Quick grep of Mozilla root file tells me they grant 138 different companies root access to SSL. Why do we need that many people trying to make a buck selling prime numbers online? It's gonzo.

deepstack 6y ago

In some ways I get why software developers want to roll their own CA, less dependancy on the OS. There are several times when I visit a web site using latest browser, but get an error while viewing a SSL page because OS CA is too old, and there is no way to upgrade it. I'm talking win xp days of course. But yeah why rely on the OS. EDIT: kinda like how node_module thing got started in the first place. But I can see how this can turn into another browser war with Google and Mozilla each starting to bundle their own CA bundles. God, can we just please have DHT type for Root CA already?

m-p-3 6y ago

One benefit from this is that some Android versions aren't receiving updated root certs anymore, and older ones will encounter issues when browsing secured websites using LetsEncrypt.[1] Because Firefox stores its own root store it is unaffected by this, and Chrome will likely be unaffected to when this change happens. [1]: https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/11/07/many-websites-will-stop-working-on-older-android-versions-in-2021/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/11/07/many-websites-will-...