bitwarden / bitwarden/clients

Snap desktop app does not have access rights to NSS Shared DB?

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#4,038 3 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

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bug desktop
Dominant language
TypeScript
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Description

Steps To Reproduce

Trying to login to self-hosted Bitwarden instance (with self-signed certificate) from the Desktop App installed as Snap.

Expected Result

Login should work

Actual Result

Login does not work and "Failed to fetch" error message is displayed.

Screenshots or Videos

No response

Additional Context

I have imported own intermediate CA certificate as described by the documentation:

For our Linux desktop app, accessing the web vault using Chromium-based browsers, and the Directory Connector desktop app, you also need to complete this Linux cert management procedure.

This works when the application is installed "natively" - by installing the Bitwarden-amd64.deb from the website, but does not work when installed as Snap (snap install bitwarden).

Can it be that Snap is missing the rights to read the NSS Shared DB?

user@pc:~$ snap run --shell bitwarden
To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo <command>".
See "man sudo_root" for details.

user@pc:/home/user$ cd .pki/
user@pc:/home/user/.pki$ ls   
ls: cannot open directory '.': Permission denied

My guess is that home-interface allows the application to access non-hidden files only, while NSS Shared DB is located under $HOME/.pki/nssdb and would require personal-files-interface configuration?

Operating System

Linux

Operating System Version

Ubuntu 22.10

Installation method

Snap

Build Version

2022.10.1

Issue Tracking Info
  • I understand that work is tracked outside of Github. A PR will be linked to this issue should one be opened to address it, but Bitwarden doesn't use fields like "assigned", "milestone", or "project" to track progress.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Reproduce the failure with the Snap installation and snap run --shell bitwarden, then review the Snap packaging/interface configuration alongside the linked Linux cert management procedure. Compare access to $HOME/.pki/nssdb with the native installation; done means login succeeds against a self-hosted instance using the imported self-signed certificate.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
electron, linux, typescript
Domain
desktop, operating-systems, security
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
30/100

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