Accessing
Restricted Resources
With
Netscape Communicator
Configuring Certificate Selection
Netscape Communicator can be configured to
ask you every time to select the appropriate certified key to be sent to
a requesting resource.
automatically select the appropriate key to be sent, or
always send the same certified key.
To choses a specific certification selection mode,
select the Security Icon,  ,
on the browser's "Navigation Toolbar".
This displays the "Security Info" page.
Select the "Navigator" link.
The "Navigator" page appears. (See following illustration.)
From the pull-down menu, select method for "Certificate to identify
you to a web site."
Example 1: User Asked Every Time to Select Certificate and Provide PSE
Password
When one "clicks" on a hyperlink to a resource that requires you to provide
a public key, the "Select a Certificate" window appears as illustrated
in the following figure.
Select the appropriate certificate from the pull-down list and "click"
the "Continue" button. The "Password Entry Dialog" box appears.
Entering the password to your "personal security environment" (PSE) sends
your certified public key to the requesting resource.
If you are an "authorized" user, you will be granted access to the resource.
Example 2: Browser Selects Certificate & User Must Provide
Password
When the browser is configured on the "Navigation"
page to
automatically select the certificate, or
to always send a specific certificate,
then only the "Password Entry Dialog" box appears and only the password
for your PSE must be entered.
Example 3: User Neither Selects Certificate Nor Enters Password
THIS CONFIGURATION IS NOT RECOMMENDED! IF THE
COMPUTER IS LEFT UNATTENDED, ANYONE CAN USE YOUR DIGITAL ID FOR ANY PURPOSE!
If Communicator is configured both to
not prompt the user to select the certificate sent to a requesting resource
(i.e. Example 3), and
to leave the PSE unprotected by a password
then the browser automatically accesses the restricted resource with no
intervention on your part.
Configurations That Leave Your PSE Password Unprotected
The Personal Security Environment (PSE) can be left password unprotected
in one of three different ways. All three modes are set via the "Passwords"
page which is accessed by
selecting the "security icon" on the "Navigation Toolbar", and
then
selecting the "Passwords" link on the "Security Info"
page
If on the "Passwords" page you select the radio button for either
"The first time your certificate is needed", or
"After X minutes of inactivity",
then your PSE will not be password protected anytime after you once use
a certificate (the first case), or anytime for X minutes after it was last
used (the second case).
The third way to leave the PSE password unprotected is to totally remove
password protection. When one selects the "Change Password" button
on the "Passwords" page, the "Change Your Communicator Password"
window appears (see next illustration). As noted in the window, if
you leave the password fields blank, there will be NO
PASSWORD PROTECTION. This also includes no
password protection for signing e-mail messages or decrypting encrypted
mail.
Last Modified:
Office of
Academic Computing
Copyright © 2003
The University
of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
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