(This question was posted on OTN two days ago, and also a few Mac forums, but I have not received any helpful information to date.)
Hello,
I have developed a website archive which is privately distributed as a stand alone archive to be run locally on the user's computer (no server). It uses Lucene search engine (
Java) to search the archive; the search API/applet is packaged in a jar file and the jarfile/applet is self-signed.
In order to do the search, a self-signed certificate is created for the search
applet, since the files in the archive it is searching are on the user's hard drive. After the initial installation of the archive, and upon the first search initiated, the security window pops up asking the user permission for the user to run the applet.
The problem lies here:
With Windows and all versions of Mac OS X prior to 10.7 (Lion), the user can check "always trust" (or similar), and from then on, subsequent searches are carried out without prompting the user to accept the certificate (even after restarting the browser application)
However, on Lion, the user can run the applet only once, and will continue to get a security prompt on every search afterwards, even though "always trust" is checked.
This behaviour occurs whether using Firefox or Safari, so it is apparent this is System related, not a browser issue.
I attempted to manually import the certificate both into the Keychain Access, and also into Authorities under Firefox's certificate manager (see
http://www.clintharris.net/2009/self-signed-certificates/). This however was not successful.
Some possibilities I have considered are:
There is no publisher name for a self-signed cert. On previous versions of OS X, the security window states the signer's name, and the option to view the certificate. The user can check "Always trust these
certificates". On Lion, the security window only states the publisher's name, which comes up as "UNKNOWN". The analogous "always" checkbox states, "Always trust
content from this
publisher". So it appears pre-Lion is allowing the option to always trust the particular certificate, whereas Lion is allowing the option to always trust the publisher.
Is there a way to create a publisher name when self-signing?
As far as importing the certificate, could it be that because the archive is local (url =
file://) that it won't recognize it? Does anyone know why this doesn't work?
Does anyone know what is happening here, or can suggest a work-around for this (besides paying for a "trusted" CA). Everything worked just hunky-dory -- until Lion...
Thank you kindly,
Allasso Travesser
