Security and Networking Components — Firefox Source Docs documentation (original) (raw)

Firefox Source Docs

This diagram models a high-level call flow upon performing an asyncOpen on an nsHttpChannel down into the NSS layer for a typical resource load.

Necko

  1. The LoadInfo, which contains security related info, is passed to the channel (nsHttpChannel) on the parent process.
  2. The channel creates a transaction and the nsHttpConnectionMgr on the socket thread is signalled to handle the transaction.
  3. The transaction is then picked up on the socket thread and “dispatched” to a new or existing ConnectionEntry that is hashed by it’s ConnectionInfo.
  4. The underlying connection, nsHttpConnection for Http/1.1 and Http/2 and HttpConnectionUDP for Http/3, will call into NSS for security functionality.

NSS

Necko interacts with NSS through two distinct interfaces. Primarily, most access flows via PSM which handles the configuration of TLS sockets, client certificate selection and server certificate verification. However, Neqo (Mozilla’s QUIC library) also relies directly on the TLS implementation inside NSS and uses it as an interface directly.

NSS’s internal structure is fairly convoluted, but there are five main areas relevant for Necko. Starting from the lowest level:

  1. blapi.h - exposes the wrappers for each cryptographic primitive supported by NSS and dispatches them to platform specific implementations.

  2. pkcs11c.c - This wraps those underlying crypto primitives to provide a PKCS11 interface as a single module.

  3. pk11pub.h - This wraps any module providing a PKCS11 interface and exposes high level cryptographic operations. It is widely used across Firefox.

  4. ssl.h and sslexp.h expose our TLS interface for use in Necko’s TLS and Neqo’s QUIC connections.

  5. cert.h exposes the certificate database functionality. pkix.h exposes the MozPkix certificate chain validation functions.

     classDiagram

class LoadInfo{ +Principal(s) (loading, triggering, toInherit) +Context }

nsHttpChannel --> nsHttpTransaction nsHttpTransaction --> nsHttpConnectionMgr nsHttpConnectionMgr --> ConnectionEntry : Via ConnectionInfo hash ConnectionEntry --> HttpConnectionBase

HttpConnectionBase <-- nsHttpConnection : Is A HttpConnectionBase <-- HttpConnectionUDP : Is A

nsHttpConnection --> nsSocketTransport2 nsSocketTransport2 --> PSM PSM --> NSPR PSM --> Off Main Thread CertVerifier Neqo --> Off Main Thread CertVerifier

%% for Http/3 HttpConnectionUDP --> Http3Session : Http/3 HttpConnectionUDP --> nsUDPSocket : Http/3 nsUDPSocket --> NSPR : Http/3 Http3Session --> Neqo : Http/3

%% security TCP stack PSM --> TLS Off Main Thread CertVerifier --> Pcks11 TLS --> Pcks11 Pcks11 --> Blapi Blapi --> Crypto Primitives Crypto Primitives --> Platform-Specific Crypto Implementations

%% transport security info PSM -- Transport Security Info Transport Security Info --> nsHttpChannel

%% security UDP stack Neqo --> TLS Off Main Thread CertVerifier--> CertDB CertDB --> Builtins

%% classes

nsHttpChannel o-- LoadInfo nsHttpChannel o-- StreamListener nsHttpConnectionMgr o-- ConnectionEntry : Many