Network Security Services

Network Security Services (NSS)

An open-source set of libraries for cross-platform security development, providing a complete implementation of crypto libraries supporting SSL and S/MIME

What is Network Security Services?

Network Security Services (NSS) is an open-source set of libraries designed to support cross-platform development of security-enabled client and server applications. Developed by Mozilla and backed by a large community of open source developers, NSS provides a complete open-source implementation of crypto libraries supporting SSL, S/MIME, PKI, PKCS#11, PKCS#12, X.509 v3 certificates, and other security standards.

NSS includes a framework to support multiple cryptographic token types in a single shared library. This allows developers to use a single API to work with any of the supported token types, such as PKCS#11 modules, public key cryptographic algorithms, symmetric key cryptographic algorithms, hashing algorithms, and secure random number generators.

Some of the key features of NSS include:

• SSL v2 and v3, and TLS v1.0, v1.1, v1.2 and v1.3 support
• Adds PKCS #11 v2.20 support for cryptographic devices
• FIPS 140 validated cryptographic module
• Integrated with Netscape Portable Runtime (NSPR) to provide platform independence
• APIs for applications that use client-server model, peer-to-peer model, or both
• Support for X.509 v3 certificates
• Plugins for many common cryptographic operations

NSS is available under the MPL 2.0 open source license and runs on many Unix and Linux variants as well as Windows and Mac OS. It is used in many open source projects like Firefox, Thunderbird, and Chromium as well as commercial applications and devices.

Network Security Services Features

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