How to: Firefox trusting company certificates

AndreasRumpl
New Contributor III

Firefox manages certificates separated from the system certificates that are used by Safari or Chrome. To circumvent the issue that users are presented with the "certificate not trusted, add exception" notification, it is possible to add the certificates automated to the users firefox installations by utilizing the following commands: Importing Certificates on Firefox & code snippet for looking for the profile name

I know that there is also the CCK utility, but that is also more or less a pain in the a**, especially when you want to maintain firefox installations that are already existing (and have a filled user profile).

Firefox now provides the possibility to trust certificates that are stored in the system keychain by setting the key "about:config", "security.enterprise_roots.enabled" to TRUE. Mozilla Help

This setting should also be stored somewhere in prefs.js, but i have not figured out how to fiddle around with this file without ruining the user profile.

Now my question:
Does someone know a handy way to set this setting on all machines without destroying everything?

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

AndreasRumpl
New Contributor III

SOLVED, but some bits needed to come together:

With Firefox 64 it is now possible to trust root certificates that are in the system certificate store
https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA/AddRootToFirefox

Also with Firefox 64 it is now possible to not only edit and distribute settings via the about:config (firefox config editor), but also by using .json files
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customizing-firefox-using-policiesjson

AND even better, it is also possible to use configuration profiles: "Policies can be specified using the Group Policy templates on Windows or configuration profiles on macOS (https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates/tree/master/mac), or by creating a file called policies.json."
https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates/blob/master/README.md

Here you can find the example plist with all currently possible keys ("IMPORTANT: This file is in active development along with the policies in Firefox. To get the policy information that corresponds to a specific release, go to https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates/releases."
https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates/blob/master/mac/org.mozilla.firefox.plist

--> The important part regarding certificates is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>EnterprisePoliciesEnabled</key>
    <true/>
    <key>Certificates</key>
    <dict>
        <key>ImportEnterpriseRoots</key>
        <true/>
    </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

You can simply edit the .plist for your needs and then upload it to the JSS (config profile - custom settings, preference domain is org.mozilla.firefox)

Just distributed this to our testing machines and it seems to work (finally!)

View solution in original post

13 REPLIES 13

Durkin
New Contributor II

I am very interested in this as well. I am having the same issues everyone else has and the old posts about CCK are not helpful.

swapple
Contributor III

watching this one also

AndreasRumpl
New Contributor III

SOLVED, but some bits needed to come together:

With Firefox 64 it is now possible to trust root certificates that are in the system certificate store
https://wiki.mozilla.org/CA/AddRootToFirefox

Also with Firefox 64 it is now possible to not only edit and distribute settings via the about:config (firefox config editor), but also by using .json files
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customizing-firefox-using-policiesjson

AND even better, it is also possible to use configuration profiles: "Policies can be specified using the Group Policy templates on Windows or configuration profiles on macOS (https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates/tree/master/mac), or by creating a file called policies.json."
https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates/blob/master/README.md

Here you can find the example plist with all currently possible keys ("IMPORTANT: This file is in active development along with the policies in Firefox. To get the policy information that corresponds to a specific release, go to https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates/releases."
https://github.com/mozilla/policy-templates/blob/master/mac/org.mozilla.firefox.plist

--> The important part regarding certificates is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>EnterprisePoliciesEnabled</key>
    <true/>
    <key>Certificates</key>
    <dict>
        <key>ImportEnterpriseRoots</key>
        <true/>
    </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

You can simply edit the .plist for your needs and then upload it to the JSS (config profile - custom settings, preference domain is org.mozilla.firefox)

Just distributed this to our testing machines and it seems to work (finally!)

ammonsc
Contributor II

Does anyone know what the key pair is for browser.urlbar.autoFill I want to turn that to False.

tthurman
Contributor III

Thank you for this! @AndreasRumpl

@ammonsc You may have to do this with a ../default/pref <filename>.js file. Using AutoConfig or just a config.js file.

Regards,
TJ

jorge_
New Contributor III

How would i go about adding the following to this plist?

Enable support for client certificates stored on macOS and Windows by setting the experimental preference security.osclientcerts.autoload to true.

i attempted it myself, but doesnt seem to populate into firefox about:config
the purpose of this is so that firefox works with okta device trust which requires user certs in keychain.

Lalitha
New Contributor

Hi, @jorge_ 

Were you able to solve this for Okta device trust and Firefox? I have the exact same requirement and modifying the plist did not seem to work for me.

Thanks in advance.

 

harshit_bhargwa
New Contributor II

@jorge.blandon As mentioned by AndreasRumpl just create the Plist file using the above mentioned settings and it will automatically import the Certificate from keychain.

NerdMusk
New Contributor II

Would like to add that you can instead use the following json schema instead of uploading a plist:

ee8b06355c4a45678dafadf7816e3e71

{
  "policies": {
    "Certificates": {
      "ImportEnterpriseRoots": true | false
    }
  }
}

spowell01
Contributor

We are trying to get our Securly filter certificate to be trusted in firefox and am not having much luck using the json schema above. I have it deployed exactly as shown, with only the "true" value configured. Firefox just fails to verify any website certificates and when i check the about:config its obvious the security.enterprise_roots.enabled is still set to false. Any ideas? we are testing on M1 hardware with Big Sur.

jtrant
Valued Contributor

@spowell please share the XML from your PLIST. This is working fine for me on an M1 Mac.

Do your certificates meet Apple's validity and cipher strength requirements? Validity shouldn't be an issue if you are pushing them via MDM, but cipher strength will be.

spowell01
Contributor

I found a very basic error in the plist I was uploading and after correcting that the filter was working as expected in FireFox. Thanks for your response @jtrant

Mind sharing the plist ?