Network Security Services

In computing, Network Security Services (NSS) comprises a set of libraries designed to support cross-platform development of security-enabled client and server applications. NSS provides a complete open-source implementation of crypto libraries supporting SSL and S/MIME.

History

NSS originated from the libraries developed when Netscape invented the SSL security protocol.

Applications that use NSS

AOL, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, and other companies use NSS in a variety of products, including the following:

• Mozilla client products, including Firefox, Thunderbird, and SeaMonkey.
• AOL Communicator and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM)
• Open source client applications such as Evolution, Pidgin, and OpenOffice.org 2.0.
• Server products from Red Hat: Red Hat Directory Server, Red Hat Certificate System, and the mod nss SSL module for the Apache web server.
• Sun Java products from the Sun Java Enterprise System, including Sun Java System Web Server, Sun Java System Directory Server, Sun Java System Portal Server, Sun Java System Messaging Server, and Sun Java System Application Server.

Technology

NSS includes a framework to which developers and OEMs can contribute patches, such as assembler code, to optimize performance on their platforms. Mozilla has certified NSS 3.x on 18 platforms.

For more detailed information about NSS, see the NSS project page and the NSS FAQ.

The Mozilla CVS tree makes source code for a Java interface to NSS available . For details, see Network Security Services for Java (JSS).

NSS makes use of Netscape Portable Runtime (NSPR), a platform-neutral open-source API for system functions designed to facilitate cross-platform development. Like NSS, NSPR has been battle-tested in multiple products. For more information, see NSPR Project Page.

Mozilla makes the latest source code available for free worldwide from http://www.mozilla.org and its mirror sites.

NSS comes with an extensive and growing set of documentation, including introductory material, API references, man pages for command-line tools, and sample code.

Programmers can utilize NSS as source and as shared (dynamic) libraries. Every NSS release is backward compatible with previous releases, allowing NSS users to upgrade to the new NSS shared libraries without recompiling or relinking their applications. Open-Source Licensing and Distribution

Software Development Kit

In addition to libraries and APIs, NSS provides security tools required for debugging, diagnostics, certificate and key management, cryptography module management, and other development tasks.

Interoperability and Open Standards

NSS supports a range of security standards, including the following:

• SSL v2 and v3. The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol allows mutual authentication between a client and server and the establishment of an authenticated and encrypted connection.
• TLS v1 (RFC 2246). The Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol from the IETF supersedes SSL v3 while remaining backward-compatible with SSL v3 implementations.
• The following PKCS standards:
  • PKCS #1. RSA standard that governs implementation of public-key cryptography based on the RSA algorithm.
  • PKCS #3. RSA standard that governs implementation of Diffie-Hellman key agreement.
  • PKCS #5. RSA standard that governs password-based cryptography, for example to encrypt private keys for storage.
  • PKCS #7. RSA standard that governs the application of cryptography to data, for example digital signatures and digital envelopes.
  • PKCS #8. RSA standard that governs the storage and encryption of private keys.
  • PKCS #9. RSA standard that governs selected attribute types, including those used with PKCS #7, PKCS #8, and PKCS #10.
  • PKCS #10. RSA standard that governs the syntax for certificate requests.
  • PKCS #11. RSA standard that governs communication with cryptographic tokens (such as hardware accelerators and smart cards) and permits application independence from specific algorithms and implementations.
  • PKCS #12. RSA standard that governs the format used to store or transport private keys, certificates, and other secret material.
• Cryptographic Message Syntax, used in S/MIME (RFC 2311 and RFC 2633). IETF message specification (based on the popular Internet MIME standard) that provides a consistent way to send and receive signed and encrypted MIME data.
• X.509 v3. ITU standard that governs the format of certificates used for authentication in public-key cryptography.
• OCSP (RFC 2560). The Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) governs real-time confirmation of certificate validity.
• PKIX Certificate and CRL Profile (RFC 3280). The first part of the four-part standard under development by the Public-Key Infrastructure (X.509) working group of the IETF (known as PKIX) for a public-key infrastructure for the Internet.
• RSA, DSA, ECDSA, Diffie-Hellman, EC Diffie-Hellman, AES, Triple DES, DES, RC2, RC4, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512, MD2, MD5, HMAC: Common cryptographic algorithms used in public-key and symmetric-key cryptography.
• FIPS 186-2 pseudorandom number generator.

For complete details, see the Encryption Technologies page of the NSS site.

FIPS 140 Validation and NISCC Testing

The NSS software crypto module has been validated three times (1997, 1999, and 2002) for conformance to FIPS 140 at Security Levels 1 and 2.

NSS was the first open source cryptographic library to receive FIPS 140 validation.

The NSS libraries passed the NISCC TLS/SSL and S/MIME test suites (1.6 million test cases of invalid input data).

For more information (including certificate numbers and links), see the NSS FIPS page.

Hardware support

NSS supports the PKCS#11 interface for hardware acceleration. Since leading accelerator vendors such as SafeNet Inc. and nCipher also support this interface, NSS-enabled applications can support a wide variety of hardware accelerators.

NSS supports the PKCS #11 interface for smart-card integration. Applications that use the PKCS #11 interface provided by NSS will therefore support smart cards from leading vendors such as ActivIdentity, Inc., Litronic, and SecureID Technologies that also support the PKCS #11 interface.

Java support

Network Security Services for Java (JSS) consists of a Java interface to NSS. It supports most of the security standards and encryption technologies supported by NSS. JSS also provides a pure Java interface for ASN.1 types and BER/DER encoding.

License

NSS is triple-licensed under the Mozilla Public License, the GNU General Public License, and the GNU Lesser General Public License.

See also

• Information security
• Security-as-a-service

External links

• NSS Introduction
• NSS Overview
• SSL Reference
• NSS tools
• NSS test suite
• S/MIME toolkit
• SSL toolkit
• JSS toolkit