Warning

This NSS documentation was just imported from our legacy MDN repository. It currently is very deprecated and likely incorrect or broken in many places.

Getting Started

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!

Note

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 chat.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 mozilla_projects_nss_an_overview_of_nss_internals.

  • learn about getting the mozilla_projects_nss_nss_sources_building_testing

  • Old documentation that is on the archived mozilla.org website.

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 mozilla_projects_nss_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