If we want to change the main sssd backend from nss to openssl, imho it
would be prudent enough to use
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/hirsute/en/man3/SSL_set_security_level.3ssl.html
APIs to set_security_level to 1.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1905790

Title:
  Make SSSD in 20.04 using OpenSSL and p11-kit (instead of NSS) for
  p11_child

Status in ca-certificates package in Ubuntu:
  New
Status in sssd package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in ca-certificates source package in Focal:
  New
Status in sssd source package in Focal:
  New

Bug description:
  [ Impact ]

  SSSD supports in 20.04 two security backends: NSS and OpenSSL
  (speaking in past tense as upstream dropped NSS support completely).

  Those two backends are used for various generic crypto features (so
  they are interchangeable), but also for the management of the PKCS#11
  modules for smart cards.

  In this case, the main problem is that by using NSS it also relies on
  the presence of a "system NSS" database [1] that is something present
  in Fedora and RHEL, but not in ubuntu or generic Linux distributions.

  In order to make SSSD to find a smart card module, we would then need to 
create a such database that mentions a p11kit proxy that will eventually load 
the p11-kit module and then add the card CA certificate to the same DB (see 
more details in [2]).
  And even in such case... It will not work at login phase.

  This is making support for Smart-card based authentication in 20.04
  quite complicated, and hard to implement in professional environments
  (see bug #1865226).

  As per this, recompiling SSSD's p11_child to use OpenSSL (as it
  already happens starting from 20.10) would be enough to make the this
  tool (the one in charge for smartcard authentications and certificate
  matching) to be able to get the smartcard devices from p11-kit allowed
  modules and to check their certificate using CA certificates in the
  ubuntu system ca certificate files (or other configured file).

  One more mayor reason to do this, is also that if we fix 20.04 now to
  use the "proper" method, people who will configure smartcard access
  there via SSSD (not easily possible right now) won't be affected by
  future migrations.

  [ Proposed Implementations ]

  1) Use p11-kit and openssl for p11_child, by changing the build/test system 
(preferred)
     https://salsa.debian.org/3v1n0-guest/sssd/-/commits/p11-kit-p11_child

  2) Build both versions and package things accordingly (hackish)
     https://salsa.debian.org/3v1n0-guest/sssd/-/commits/p11-kit-p11_child-v1

  [ Test case ]

  With a smartcard reader available (and with a card in its slot) as reported 
by:
   $ p11-kit list-modules

  launch:
   $ sudo /usr/libexec/sssd/p11_child --pre -d 10 --debug-fd=2 \
     --nssdb=/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

  The tool should find your card:

  (2020-11-26 21:34:22:020395): [p11_child[100729]] [do_card] (0x4000): Module 
List:
  (2020-11-26 21:34:22:020481): [p11_child[100729]] [do_card] (0x4000): common 
name: [p11-kit-trust].
  (2020-11-26 21:34:22:020497): [p11_child[100729]] [do_card] (0x4000): dll 
name: [/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkcs11/p11-kit-trust.so].
  (2020-11-26 21:34:22:020569): [p11_child[100729]] [do_card] (0x4000): 
Description [/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt                              
PKCS#11 Kit                     ] Manufacturer [PKCS#11 Kit                     
] flags [1] removable [false] token present [true].
  (2020-11-26 21:34:22:020611): [p11_child[100729]] [do_card] (0x4000): common 
name: [opensc-pkcs11].
  (2020-11-26 21:34:22:020646): [p11_child[100729]] [do_card] (0x4000): dll 
name: [/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkcs11/opensc-pkcs11.so].
  (2020-11-26 21:34:22:025443): [p11_child[100729]] [do_card] (0x4000): 
Description [VMware Virtual USB CCID 00 00                                   
VMware                          ] Manufacturer [VMware                          
] flags [7] removable [true] token present [true].
  (2020-11-26 21:34:22:025725): [p11_child[100729]] [do_card] (0x4000): Found 
[MARCO TREVISAN (PIN CNS0)] in slot [VMware Virtual USB CCID 00 00][0] of 
module [1][/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkcs11/opensc-pkcs11.so].

  Then the tool might fail if the card certificate is not added to the
  ca-certificates.crt, but this is outside the scope of the test case.

  What it matters is that the card is found.

  [ Regression potential ]

  While the change may involve quite different code paths when it comes
  to security features, I think we trust OpenSSL enough to be an
  acceptable crypto backend for PKCS#11 operations. And behavior should
  not change (if not improved), also assuming that upstream dropped NSS
  support completely in latest release, keeping the same
  functionalities.

  The only binary that is really affected in its behavior is p11_child.

  And I'm confident this will break only those setup (if there are any,
  given that smartcard access is currently not supported by ubuntu) that
  have been manually configured using an unsupported system NSS db.

  In the remote case there are such configurations, though, the fix will
  be as easy as adding the CA certificates to the new PAM cert DB (by
  default /etc/sssd/pki/sssd_auth_ca_db.pem), while the p11-kit modules
  will continue to work as before.

  It's also technically easy to do a postinst script that will just
  export all the certificates from the old nss db (/etc/pki/nssdb) into
  the new file, if we want to avoid any unlikely breakage.

  [1] 
https://github.com/SSSD/sssd/blob/sssd-2_3_1/src/responder/pam/pamsrv.c#L53
  [2] 
https://hackmd.io/@3v1n0/ubuntu-smartcard-login#NSS-Database-to-be-deprecated-post-2004

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