Open Source Mozilla Crypto Released

lunatik17 writes "NSS 3.1 Beta 1 has been released, including a new implementation of the RSA algorithm. This release provides, for the first time, a complete open-source implementation of the Netscape crypto libraries, and will be used in a future version of Personal Security Manager for Mozilla." This is the only significant feature I've found lacking in Mozilla.

Comments

You can use SSL pages in Mozilla builds!

[wct]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned that you already can read SSL pages in Mozilla, by installing the Personal Security Manager. It's an XP thingy, so you just need to start Mozilla with write privileges, then visit the website:

http://docs.iplanet.com/docs/manuals/psm/psm-moz illa/index.html

and click on the Install Personal Security Manager. Then you can do all your on-line banking and shopping and stuff. I've tried it on the latest nightly build and it works a charm.

Re:Limitations of NSS security

[drfireman]

The RSA algorithm has been public knowledge since it was developed. It's release (a few weeks in advance of the patent expiration) simply means people can use it without a license from RSA.

RSA has not been cracked. Some specific RSA keys of particular lengths (e.g., 512 bits) have been discovered. That's no big deal, since we already know roughly how much computational power it should take to crack a given key. And some weaknesses in particular implementations of RSA have been noted. But it's reasonably well understood how much (implementation-independent) security is provided by a given key length, and notwithstanding advances in factoring, that has stood up pretty well.

RSA may or may not have something better but top secret up their sleeves, but if so it hasn't been exposed to the scrutiny of the RSA algorithm. And the most likely areas for improvement are in computational efficiency and things like that, not in security per se.

Re:Limitations of NSS security

[Millennium]

I'm sorry, but this is completely clueless.

The reason RSA released their algorithm into the public domain (where it belonged from the very beginning) was that the patent would have expired a week later anyway. Once it expired, RSA would have been forced to release the algorithm into the public domain; this is the way all patents work (you're granted a legal monopoly on whatever is patented for a limited amount of time, up to seventeen years if you keep renewing the patent. In exchange for that monopoly, you must release the item being patented into the public domain once the patent expires).

Also, just because an algorithm is public doesn't mean it is not secure. In fact, all known and trusted algorithms are publicly well-known (many are also patented, so they can't actually be used without a license). This is done for precisely the same reason software is Open-Sourced: peer review. You want people to try and crack the algorithm, because only if people try their hardest and still can't break it is your algorithm really secure.

Also, as for RSA being cracked, while you are technically correct there's the fact that the crack only works on keys up to a certain, relatively small, length. Make your keys nice and long (1024 bits or more, if I remember right; keep in mind that's not even 0.2K) and the crack is useless.

So no, RSA's releasing of the algorithm is no indication whatsoever that it's not secure enough.
----------

Re:Limitations of NSS security

[ssimpson]

It's great to see that the open source browsers can finally be used for "secure" use over the internet, but at the same time I'm wondering why they're using the now-public RSA encryption algorithm.

Because it's versatile, easy to implement and very well trusted. Oh, and it's free.

I'm not an encryption expert, but surely it seems to me that any algorithm that has been released by a company into the public domain cannot be particularly secure

Sorry, that's crap. The strength of RSA is built upon mathematics - how would a patent expiring change this in any way?

Still, we previously could have used a combination of Elgamal and DSS to do the same as RSA, but all of the existing web servers running SSL and cert vendors (Verisign et al) all solely use RSA - they don't offer Elgamal/DSS certs.