Network Security Services (NSS) is a set of libraries designed to support cross-platform development of security-enabled server applications. Applications built with NSS can support SSL v2 and v3, TLS, PKCS #5, PKCS #7, PKCS #11, PKCS #12, S/MIME, X.509 v3 certificates, and other security standards.

Project Information

Most of the existing NSS code is now available on Mozilla for informational purposes only. Build instructions are not yet available.

For information about the NSS project, see the following:

• Download PKI Source. Latest NSS source code.
• History of NSS. A brief history of NSS.
• cert7.db. General format of the cert7.db database.
• Content Version Numbers in the Certificate Database. Information about content version numbers in cert7.db.

NSS includes several libraries designed to support cross-platform development of S/MIME applications. Originally created to support S/MIME in Communicator 4.x and Personal Security Manager (PSM), these libraries will form the basis of a new S/MIME Toolkit for cross-platform development of S/MIME applications.

In addition to the S/MIME Toolkit, SSL and other portions of NSS may be broken out into separate modules.

Available documentation and the current status of the project are summarized below.

Documentation

• Introduction to Public-Key Cryptography. Explains the basic concepts of public-key cryptography that underlie NSS.
• Introduction to SSL. Introduces the SSL protocol, including information about cryptographic ciphers supported by SSL and the steps involved in the SSL handshake.

The following documents describe some of the NSS APIs and tools. All of these documents were originally written for earlier commercial releases of NSS. Therefore, some of the information they contain is a bit out of date. They are currently being revised, and we will post the new versions as they become available.

• Introduction to Network Security Services. Introduction to the NSS libraries and documentation.
• Reference documentation:
  • SSL Reference. API used to invoke SSL operations.
• Tools documentation:
  • Using the Certificate Database Tool. Tool for manipulating certificate and key databases.
  • Using the Security Module Database Tool. Tool for manipulating PKCS #11 security modules.
  • Using the SSL Debugging Tool. Tool for debugging SSL code.

NSS is built on top of Netscape Portable Runtime (NSPR); developers using NSS must call some NSPR functions. For information on NSPR, see the following:

• Netscape Portable Runtime. NSPR project page.
• NSPR Reference. NSPR API documentation.

Status Summary

• Ensuring compliance with the new export regulations.
  
• Working out source code control processes, including CVS details, arrangements for contributions, Bugzilla details, and so on.
  
• Determining how to break out the existing S/MIME and SSL code as separate projects (see S/MIME Toolkit).
• Determining what additional code we can release.
• Preparing a roadmap for future NSS development.