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    Firefox 31 refuses webconfigurator certificate

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved webGUI
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    • jimpJ
      jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
      last edited by

      I have several installs of FF31 and one of them gave me problems and the others are OK. It's just one profile, too. If I make a new profile on the same system, it's OK.

      I had to toggle security.use_mozillapkix_verification to false on the profile (via about:config) in question to make it work.

      I suspect it's something to do with the cert database but deleting the old certs didn't help in my case.

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      • R
        rekd0514
        last edited by

        @jimp:

        I have several installs of FF31 and one of them gave me problems and the others are OK. It's just one profile, too. If I make a new profile on the same system, it's OK.

        I had to toggle security.use_mozillapkix_verification to false on the profile (via about:config) in question to make it work.

        I suspect it's something to do with the cert database but deleting the old certs didn't help in my case.

        Thanks this was happening for me as well and that worked. I noticed it was working in IE and went searching google. :)

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        • R
          rekd0514
          last edited by

          @rekd0514:

          @jimp:

          I have several installs of FF31 and one of them gave me problems and the others are OK. It's just one profile, too. If I make a new profile on the same system, it's OK.

          I had to toggle security.use_mozillapkix_verification to false on the profile (via about:config) in question to make it work.

          I suspect it's something to do with the cert database but deleting the old certs didn't help in my case.

          Thanks this was happening for me as well and that worked. I noticed it was working in IE and went searching google. :)

          I am getting another error in firefox when trying to access my Unifi AP GUI. Any ideas of other security settings Mozilla might have changed?

          Issuer certificate is invalid. (Error code: sec_error_ca_cert_invalid)

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          • jimpJ
            jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
            last edited by

            @rekd0514:

            I am getting another error in firefox when trying to access my Unifi AP GUI. Any ideas of other security settings Mozilla might have changed?

            Issuer certificate is invalid. (Error code: sec_error_ca_cert_invalid)

            That's a completely different issue, though I'm not sure if FF has a way around that one. There's an old iLO port I connect to now and then that does that, but I end up loading it in Chrome since FF refuses with no workaround.

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            • R
              rekd0514
              last edited by

              @jimp:

              @rekd0514:

              I am getting another error in firefox when trying to access my Unifi AP GUI. Any ideas of other security settings Mozilla might have changed?

              Issuer certificate is invalid. (Error code: sec_error_ca_cert_invalid)

              That's a completely different issue, though I'm not sure if FF has a way around that one. There's an old iLO port I connect to now and then that does that, but I end up loading it in Chrome since FF refuses with no workaround.

              It seems that if I switch back to true the Unifi GUI works again, but then pfsense isn't accessible. I guess it is one or the other. lol

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              • W
                wuestenkatze
                last edited by

                With respect to those who solved the problem of FF31 and the WebConfigurator certificates by resetting the PKIX in FF31 to false, this is a workaround which will go away apparently. Mozilla has completely replaced and simplified the code that evaluates the validity of the certificates and certificate chains. The new code has been available in earlier versions of FF but was not activated by default. In FF31 they switched from the old code to the new code. You can undo that switch by setting the PKIX flag to false. On their web site Mozilla notes that as of FF33 this setting and the old certificate validation code will go away and the only code they will then use to evaluate the validity of certificates is the new PKIX code. Therefore in my view this problem will come back and there will be no workaround as of FF33.

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                • jimpJ
                  jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                  last edited by

                  Correct, but this is a bug in the PKIX verification which hopefully they will identify and fix sometime between now and then.

                  I haven't had a chance to try a beta/nightly build of a newer version to see if it's any better.

                  Worst case, you can make a new profile and import settings back into it bit by bit. Mozbackup makes that fairly simple.

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                  • M
                    miken32
                    last edited by

                    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1056341

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                    • jimpJ
                      jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                      last edited by

                      FYI- They mentioned in that Mozilla bugzilla entry about how the default self-signed certificate is formed with generic default values, which results in many certificates using the same details and causing some interesting behavior with the verification process.

                      On 2.2 I just committed a change that will generate new certificates using some more varied values including a unique ID in the CN which should improve this behavior on new installs.

                      The core problem is still a Firefox problem, but at least over time this can help lower its impact on people.

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                      • P
                        phil.davis
                        last edited by

                        @jimp - thanks for doing this. As, I think, you mentioned on the change, it would be nice to have a way to generate a new certificate after setting up a system. Then the certificate could actually reflect the host and/or other data about the real system (even though it still would not be linked back upstream to a public-verifiable certificate chain).
                        And then also existing users can regenerate the certificate after upgrading to 2.2, as they wish.

                        As the Greek philosopher Isosceles used to say, "There are 3 sides to every triangle."
                        If I helped you, then help someone else - buy someone a gift from the INF catalog http://secure.inf.org/gifts/usd/

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                        • jimpJ
                          jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                          last edited by

                          That's my intention, though I'm not sure yet if it will be a GUI option, a CLI option, or what.

                          For now if someone wants to they can run the new function from Diagnostics > Command in the PHP execute box and then restart the GUI and that's it, so the actual backend stuff is all there, it only needs some hook into the UI in a way that can't be hit accidentally.

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                          • jimpJ
                            jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                            last edited by

                            Tried to make a GUI option and failed, the browser would choke on the cert change and wanted to resubmit the form which made a new cert which then started looping through that whole process. Not sure of a good way around that one yet.

                            Made a CLI option,

                            pfSsh.php playback generateguicert
                            

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                            • jimpJ
                              jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                              last edited by

                              For those on 2.1.x that hit this bug and want to patch it now, you can use the following commit ID with the System Patches package:

                              https://github.com/pfsense/pfsense/commit/a376c57de58765dbd469cb07ee3108da49a2657d

                              Apply that patch and then from the command line run

                              pfSsh.php playback generateguicert
                              

                              The GUI will restart with a fresh certificate which you will have to accept in the browser again, but it will load in Firefox with the new certificate.

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                              • G
                                gazmac52
                                last edited by

                                Hi,
                                I had this same issue today after FF version 33.1 update.
                                Setting security.use_mozillapkix_verification to false did not help.

                                THEN SUCCESS!! :)
                                Goto Help >> Troubleshooting Information >> Reset Firefox to its default state

                                This solved all issues for me.
                                BTW, "security.use_mozillapkix_verification" no longer is an option. Evidently old data was hindering operation.

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                                • jimpJ
                                  jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                                  last edited by

                                  Removing all of the old certs is what helped, not the full reset, but the full reset removed them. After you access a few more pfSense installs it will break again until they fix the bug.

                                  Remember: Upvote with the ๐Ÿ‘ button for any user/post you find to be helpful, informative, or deserving of recognition!

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