Firefox crashes when I insert CAC card into smart card reader
I am using Firefox 4.0.1 on the Ubuntu operating system. I have installed a Common Access Card (CAC) card reader using coolkeypk11. When I test the smart card reader from the terminal, everything appears to work fine. I am able to load the smart card reader into Firefox's security devices section. However, as soon as I insert a CAC card into the reader, Firefox immediately crashes. It doesn't matter what website I am on or what I am doing. As soon as the CAC card gets inserted, Firefox crashes. I have tried loading and unloading the card reader from Firefox as well as uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox. I have no idea how to make this work. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
All Replies (8)
No answers yet. Just more problems. I established a connection between my CAC reader and Thunderbird and now Thunderbird crashes any time I insert a card. Hope someone can help soon.
I have seen posts elsewhere that state there is a problem with coolkey and DoD CAC cards. The recommended solution is to us cackey instead of coolkey. e.g., < sudo apt-get install cackey. Once this is installed, then link firefox to the new .so file associated with cackey (the .so file associated with coolkey is /usr/lib/pkcs11/libcoolkeypk11.so and I don't know what the replacement for cackey is yet.) The problem is that cackey is maintained on the Forge.mil site, which requires a CAC card to access it. This is great since I can't get my CAC card to work.
Modified by jajm14
I found the solution. The problem is that the coolkey package does not work with the newer Department of Defense (DOD) Common Access Cards (CAC). The vast majority of instructions on the net tell you to install coolkey. Rather, you should install cackey. This has fixed the problems I was having with both Firefox and Thunderbird. Go to Forge.Mil to download the latest cackey package (https://software.forge.mil/sf/frs/do/viewRelease/projects.community_cac/frs.cackey.0_5_12). Unfortunately, you need a CAC card to access the site. Just use another computer and transfer the files to the stricken computer later. At the bottom of the page, click on "Download Release" and save the zip file. The latest version I copied was 0.5.12.zip. Copy the file to your Linux system and then extract the files. Several folders will result from the extraction. Find the README file in folder "cackey-0.5.12" and follow the instructions. The ./configure command didn't copy all of the files over properly, so I manually copied two of the files into the applicable folders as specified by the README file. Hope this helps. Good luck!
I have been using cackey for the past several months now and I am having these problems with Firefox 4 regardless. The problem here I do not believe is coolkey as I had never used it to begin with. I have always used cackey. I did, however use a DoD CAC add-on with Firefox 3.6.x and this add-on I just found out is not compatible with Firefox 4. I hope that updating that add-on to run on Firefox 4 should prove to be a solution.
I have a similar problem, I'm using the Aladdin / Safenet token. I load the library into the security device. When I plug in the smart card, Firefox crashes.
I was able to resolve the problem by simply unloading the security module (I'm using coolkey) restarting Firefox and reloading libcoolkeyps11.so
Here's a more detailed explanation: Go to FF Prefs/Advanced Encryption tab. Click Security Devices, Find the module that has your smart card as a child. Click on that top-level module. Unload this module and close Firefox completely. Now, insert your smart card and restart Firefox, if FF doesn't load try removing your smart card, go back in to the preferences and look for other modules that reference your smart card, remove those and try again.
Once FF is back up, open the Security Devices dialog again and load the module (if you are using coolkey it's /usr/lib/pkcs11/libcoolkeypk11.so).
I hope this helps.
wolfseyn's method didn't work for me. I tried downloading and installing the latest cackey 64-bit deb and it did not work. I am running 64-bit Ubuntu 11.10 BTW. Then, I unpacked the cackey deb and copied the cackey so file to /usr/lib/pkcs11 folder and went to FF and loaded the module. Yeah, success.
Modified by lingenfr
I recently replaced my hard drive and installed Oneiric. Now, my previous solution does not work. I don't think I was clear on my previous solution: Basically, you want to add the coolkey library in FF prefs with the card inserted (it would crash if I inserted the card with libcoolkeyps11.so module already loaded in FF). Doing that now, will crash FF for me. I'm running FF 7.01 on Oneiric (the Ubuntu version of FF).
solved: Ubuntu 12.04 latest updates
I followed all of the instructions from Mike:
sudo apt-get install libpcsclite-dev pcscd pcsc-tools libccid coolkey build-essential autoconf
Import CAC Certificates into Firefox
Next we are going to download the CAC certificates for your particular CAC Card
I then downloaded cackey latest debian package from a link I found at militarycac.com
I then tried to install the cackey debian package in ubuntu and it failed. It could not create a folder /usr/lib64. Easy fix to install, I just created an empty foler lib64 under /usr/. I then installed the cackey and firefox didn't crash!