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client certificate on smartcard leads to SEC_ERROR_LIBRARY_FAILURE

  • 4 replies
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by cor-el

0xFF
0xFF
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SSL client certificates do not work on Firefox 74.0 64-bit (Windows 10) and smartcards as expected. The smartcard gets accessed via PKCS #11 library.

When the client certificate is placed into the software security module, Firefox can send it to the requesting web server and it works as expected.

Once the very same certificate was successfully imported into a smartcard and removed from the software security module, authentication fails in Firefox with "SEC_ERROR_LIBRARY_FAILURE". The nginx web server reports: SSL_do_handshake() failed (SSL: error:14094438:SSL routines:ssl3_read_bytes:tlsv1 alert internal error:SSL alert number 80) while SSL handshaking, client: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, server: 0.0.0.0:443

When using Chrome, the same client certificate from the same smartcard gets used and successfully connects to the web server.

Is there a known issue for this? How can this problem be narrowed down? Is there some kind of debug log file to get further information?

SSL client certificates do not work on Firefox 74.0 64-bit (Windows 10) and smartcards as expected. The smartcard gets accessed via PKCS #11 library. When the client certificate is placed into the software security module, Firefox can send it to the requesting web server and it works as expected. Once the very same certificate was successfully imported into a smartcard and removed from the software security module, authentication fails in Firefox with "SEC_ERROR_LIBRARY_FAILURE". The nginx web server reports: SSL_do_handshake() failed (SSL: error:14094438:SSL routines:ssl3_read_bytes:tlsv1 alert internal error:SSL alert number 80) while SSL handshaking, client: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, server: 0.0.0.0:443 When using Chrome, the same client certificate from the same smartcard gets used and successfully connects to the web server. Is there a known issue for this? How can this problem be narrowed down? Is there some kind of debug log file to get further information?

All Replies (4)

Roland Tanglao
Roland Tanglao
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Hi 0xFF

This is beyond my skill level :-) I searched for a bug but couldn't find one. Here's my search, maybe you'll find a bug that's similar but I didn't see one:

https://mzl.la/2Ui40hk

Anyhow please file a bug:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi

Cheers!

...Roland

dkeeler
dkeeler
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Instead of loading your PKCS#11 module, can you enable osclientcerts by setting `security.osclientcerts.autoload` to `true` in about:config?

Roland Tanglao
Roland Tanglao
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Hi 0xFF:

To use that pref you will have to use Firefox 75 beta (security.osclientcerts.autoload is in 75 but not in 74)

Cheers! ...Roland

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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^To use that pref you will have to use Firefox 75 beta

I think that for Windows this pref got added in Firefox 72 and 68.4 ESR, so this should work with the current release. For Mac it got added in Firefox 75.

  • 1584401 - build osclientcerts in-tree (windows) [72]
  • 1586915 - build osclientcerts in-tree (macos) [75]