Netscape NETSCAPE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 4.5, Installation And Setup Manual

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System Architecture
76 Netscape Certificate Management System Installation and Setup Guide • October 2001
NSS
Network Security Services (NSS) is a set of libraries designed to support
cross-platform development of security-enabled communications applications.
Applications built with the NSS libraries support the SSL protocol for
authentication, tamper detection, and encryption as well as the PKCS #11 interface
for cryptographic token interfaces. Netscape uses NSS to support these features in
a wide range of products, including Certificate Management System.
For more information about NSS, check this site:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/pki/nss/
As shown in Figure 1-10, NSS communicates with PKCS #11 modules through the
PKCS #11 interface and in turn provides the foundation for Java Security Services
and higher Java layers.
JSS and the Java/JNI Layer
Java Security Services (JSS) provides a Java interface for security operations
performed by NSS. JSS and higher levels of the Certificate Management System
architecture are built with the Java Native Interface (JNI), which provides binary
compatibility across different versions of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). This
design allows customized subsystem services to be compiled and built just once
and run on a range of platforms.
Middleware/Java 2 Layers
A middleware layer above JSS and the Java/JNI layer provides a range of services
required by the Registration Manager, Certificate Manager, Data Recovery
Manager, and Online Certificate Status Manager. The middleware layer is based on
Java 2.0, SDK 1.3.0, and it underlies both the manager subsystems and the APIs
available to third-party developers for building custom authentication and policy
modules. The default authentication and policy modules provided with Certificate
Management System are built from the same Java classes.