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View Full Version : web browser. secure connection failed...

crispy
10-22-2011, 04:41 PM
whilst trying to log on to just some websites i'm getting this message.
secure connection failed
www.website uses invalid security certificate
(error code?:sec_error_expired_certificate

this could be a problem with the servers config.or it could be someone trying to impersonate the server

or you can add an exception.


anybody know what's going on here?
and will i be secure if i add the exception?

tx
tuxsavvy
10-22-2011, 04:56 PM
It is hard to see what is the website that you're having issues with without telling us the exact link to the site. There are many potential issues:

The certificate was expired not long before you visited the site and the owner has not yet bothered to pay for new/updated certificate.
The certificate was self signed and it was not authorised by the widely accepted certificate authorities. This is somewhat fairly common.
The certificate was revoked probably because the certificate authority/authorities was rejected. Like that recent incident with google.com domain hijacking.
The certificate was probably issued by some dynamically generated site that does not go through the proper certificate authorities. In other words, it could be a Man-In-The-Middle attack.

You maybe secure if you add the exception but again it all depends on your past experience/s with this site (if any) and other potential sources of warnings telling you that site cannot be trusted.

Also I do not believe this is specifically N900 related, if you visit the exact same site with any other device, say a computer you may most likely encounter the same instance if the computer in this instance was updated recently.
crispy
10-22-2011, 05:11 PM
this has happened whilst using facebook,twitter and play.com so far on my n900.
i'm using a netbook on the same wifi network and none of the same issues with any sites.
it let me browse a few pages of the play.com site. then when i tried to log into my account on there it came up with the secure connection failed. thats when i started getting a little worried.
tx for replying