How to get involved with NSS
Network Security Services (NSS) is a base library for cryptographic algorithms and secure network protocols used by Mozilla software.
Would you like to get involved and help us to improve the core security of Mozilla Firefox and other applications that make use of NSS? We are looking forward to your contributions!
We have a large list of tasks waiting for attention, and we are happy to assist you in identifying areas that match your interest or skills. You can find us on irc.mozilla.org in channel #nss or you could ask your questions on the mozilla.dev.tech.crypto newsgroup.
The NSS library and its supporting command line tools are written in the C programming language. Its build system and the automated tests are based on makefiles and bash scripts.
Over time, many documents have been produced that describe various aspects of NSS. You can start with:
- the current primary NSS documentation page from which we link to other documentation.
- a General Overview of the applications that use NSS and the features it provides.
- a high level Introduction to the Internals of NSS.
- learn about getting the NSS sources, building, and testing.
- Old documentation that is on the archived mozilla.org website.
(Unfortunately the NSS project doesn't have a technical writer at this time, so our documentation is not as organized as we would like it to be. You could contribute by organizing it in a better way.)
NSS Sample Code
A good place to start learning how to write NSS applications are the command line tools that are maintained by the NSS developers. You can find them in subdirectory mozilla/security/nss/cmd
Or have a look at some basic NSS sample code.
A new set of samples is currently under development and review, see Create new NSS samples.
You are welcome to download the samples via: hg clone https://hg.mozilla.org/projects/nss; cd nss; hg update SAMPLES_BRANCH
Opportunities to contribute:
... (this section is still under construction, but there are many contribution opportunities)
You could have a look at our recent ToDo list.