Bug 1236526 - Proper PKCS #11 support in nginx
Summary: Proper PKCS #11 support in nginx
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED EOL
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: nginx
Version: 22
Hardware: Unspecified
OS: Unspecified
unspecified
unspecified
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On: 1217915 1218797 1233593 1235284 1271501
Blocks: PKCS11
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2015-06-29 11:15 UTC by Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos
Modified: 2016-07-19 15:06 UTC (History)
9 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2016-07-19 15:06:56 UTC
Type: Bug
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos 2015-06-29 11:15:04 UTC
Description of problem:
Currently nginx supports PKCS #11 via engine_pkcs11, but this support is broken in various ways.
1. PKCS #11 URLs cannot be loaded (see #1233593), the URLs have to be specified as "engine:pkcs11:pkcs11:xxx", which defeats the purpose of using PKCS #11 URLs in the first place (see #1173546).
2. nginx by default uses the fork model and PKCS #11 requires special handling of forking processes. That special handling is not there, making any HSMs and software security modules unusable (on softhsm works incidentally) - see #1235284.
3. p11-kit has a deadlock on fork making engine_pkcs11 (as used by nginx) unusable.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Configure a PKCS #11 module
2. Specify PKCS #11 URLs as "engine:pkcs11:URL" in the configuration file
3. Run nginx and try to connect to HTTPS port

Actual results:
Crash or deadlock.

Expected results:
Normal operation.

Comment 1 Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos 2015-06-30 09:32:44 UTC
I'm adding another related issue.
4. Any HSMs used via opensc will fail, because opensc has a bug on fork(). See #1218797. Fortunately there no major HSMs supported via opensc (mostly smart cards).

Comment 2 Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos 2015-09-22 07:14:54 UTC
Added #1265106 which prevents p11-kit from being usable using the Fedora's SELinux policy for web servers.

Comment 3 Fedora End Of Life 2016-07-19 15:06:56 UTC
Fedora 22 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2016-07-19. Fedora 22 is
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of
Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version. If you
are unable to reopen this bug, please file a new report against the
current release. If you experience problems, please add a comment to this
bug.

Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.


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