We do have UI for adding certs. We (or someone else) could write an addon that 
enabled cert removal. i.e. show a dialog with a list of installed certs. Select 
some. Hit "Remove" to delete them. It would also be easy to port into Fennec 
from the add-on so that might help move that bug to "trivial". I'm sure someone 
could help walk you through that via email or #mobile on IRC if you want.

- Wes

----- Original Message -----
From: "James Willcox" <[email protected]>
To: "Matt Weeks" <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2014 6:48:06 AM
Subject: Re: Client certificates in Firefox Mobile

Matt, 

While I think we would love to improve the experience around client 
certificates, it just hasn’t been a high priority. Every now and then someone 
will mention it, but that’s about it. I guess not enough folks are using this 
yet for it to really matter. 

However, it does seem like bug 1081711 should be relatively easy to fix, so 
maybe we should do that. As for UI for adding/removing certificates, the 
easiest way forward there would be to have a tool that can wrap a cert in an 
addon. Installing the addon would install the cert, and conversely remove it 
when the addon is removed. This shouldn’t be too hard, but like everything else 
it’s a matter of finding someone with time. 

James 




On Oct 15, 2014, at 8:50 PM, Matt Weeks < [email protected] > wrote: 

Hello, 
Could someone make a few changes to the Firefox Mobile client certificate 
handling? Client certificates are an awesome authentication mechanism that is 
much more secure and easier to use than passwords, and supported in most 
browsers. After seeing client certificate auth working with my previous 
employer, I started putting it on all my sites. Sadly, there are a couple 
issues with the implementation in Firefox Mobile (not desktop) making them 
difficult to use. 

First, when visiting a site requiring a client cert, the "Remember this 
decision" checkbox doesn't seem to work. Whenever you open a new page (unless a 
connection was kept alive) you still get prompted. This means using a 
certificate enabled website gets really annoying. 
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1081711 

Second, although cert issuance works great, you can't remove a certificate you 
were issued. So if you have enrolled a few certs, your certificate list gets 
cluttered and there's nothing you can do about it, even after trying to delete 
all private data in the Settings->Privacy menu. So it becomes a privacy bug 
too. I haven't filed this one in bugzilla, because I'm not sure the right way 
to fix this. Ideally, you'd have a certificate menu where you could list and 
delete your certificates, but if they were deleted with "Site settings" or 
"Saved passwords" I think that would work too. 

You can test this here: https://www.scriptjunkie.us/getacert 

More than ever before, people are realizing that the typical password-based 
authentication systems need to be replaced. Every day attackers get victims to 
enter their passwords into phishing pages or guess or brute-force their 
passwords... often leading to account hijacking or the theft of sensitive 
personal information or files. Not to mention the headache of coming up with 
and remembering complex passwords. So most people re-use them and get hacked 
again. Client certificates are free of these issues, being inherently 
re-usable, not needing to be remembered and having more than enough entropy to 
be secure against all the common password attacks. 

Also, given the news over the past year or so, a lot of people are concerned 
about NSA (or Iranian or French...) spying on their personal information. All 
of these have been linked to intercepting HTTPS connections, usually with 
fraudulently obtained certificates from one of the hundreds (or thousands) of 
trusted root and intermediate certificate authorities. But when a site uses 
client certificate authentication, it can verify the connection against the 
client's key, no longer just relying on trusted CA's, stopping these attacks. 

So help us stop hackers, save users, freedom, and justice, and make client 
certs work! Also, if you fix one of these issues, you'll be my hero, and I'll 
buy you lunch if you ever come by San Antonio. 

Thanks, 
Matt 

-- 

http://www.scriptjunkie.us/ 
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