Weird issue with a certificate

CalypzeCalypze Stockholm, Sweden
edited October 2009 in Science & Tech
Since I'm studying at a university, I live in a room belonging to them, and to use the Internet, I have to sign in at their network with my computer, to which I'm directed automatically whenever I start Firefox.

When I started up today however, Firefox reported that the certificate of that sign-in site was somehow not ok, and asked if I wanted to add an exception (I guess that means accepting the certificate). I declined to answer, closed Firefox and restarted it again. The warning didn't reappear. I ran CCleaner, restarted my computer, and started Firefox again. No warning this time either.

So I wonder if that warning - that has only appeared once ever - is anything to worry about. How could the certificate be "temporarily" lacking? Do you think the fault was with Firefox or with that site?

Comments

  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited October 2009
    Calypze wrote:
    Since I'm studying at a university, I live in a room belonging to them, and to use the Internet, I have to sign in at their network with my computer, to which I'm directed automatically whenever I start Firefox.

    When I started up today however, Firefox reported that the certificate of that sign-in site was somehow not ok, and asked if I wanted to add an exception (I guess that means accepting the certificate). I declined to answer, closed Firefox and restarted it again. The warning didn't reappear. I ran CCleaner, restarted my computer, and started Firefox again. No warning this time either.

    So I wonder if that warning - that has only appeared once ever - is anything to worry about. How could the certificate be "temporarily" lacking? Do you think the fault was with Firefox or with that site?

    Most likely the site you visited was doing maintenance on one of there servers and when you rebooted you had a fresh dns cache and resolved to a different server.

    If you ever have it happen to every site you go to get off line ASAP, test it on another pc and report it to your network administrator because someone is arp cache poisoning. (Man in the middle attack)
  • CalypzeCalypze Stockholm, Sweden
    edited October 2009
    GrayFox wrote:
    Most likely the site you visited was doing maintenance on one of there servers and when you rebooted you had a fresh dns cache and resolved to a different server.

    Though (as mentioned in the OP) it worked "normally" just with rebooting Firefox, before I rebooted the entire machine.
    GrayFox wrote:
    If you ever have it happen to every site you go to get off line ASAP, test it on another pc and report it to your network administrator because someone is arp cache poisoning. (Man in the middle attack)

    Thanks for the warning, I'll keep it in mind.
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