Network Security Services

NSS originated from the libraries developed when Netscape invented the SSL security protocol. FIPS 140 validation and NISCC testing The NSS software crypto module has been validated five times (in 1997,{{cite web ==Applications that use NSS==

AOL, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems/Oracle Corporation, Google and other companies and individual contributors have co-developed NSS. Mozilla provides the source code repository, bug tracking system, and infrastructure for mailing lists and discussion groups. They and others named below use NSS in a variety of products, including the following: • Mozilla client products, including Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, and Firefox for mobile.{{cite web • AOL Communicator and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) • Open source client applications such as Evolution, Pidgin, and OpenOffice.org 2.0 onward (and its descendants). • 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 server 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, open source version of Directory Server OpenDS. • Libreswan IKE/IPsec requires NSS. It is a fork of Openswan which could optionally use NSS. ==Architecture==

NSS includes a framework to which developers and OEMs can contribute patches, such as assembly code, to optimize performance on their platforms. Mozilla has certified NSS 3.x on 18 platforms. 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 used heavily in multiple products. 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. 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 new NSS shared libraries without recompiling or relinking their applications. Interoperability and open standards NSS supports a range of security standards, including the following: ==See also==