Connection not secure?

Xeddicus · February 2018

Chrome (Version 66.0.3343.4) is choking on the forums not being secure all of the sudden ("Your connection is not private", NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID) and Firefox seems to agree, but just notes it in the info bar.

Anyone else seeing this? Started a few hours (or so) ago for me.

Echo · February 2018

Sure it's not mixed content due to sigs/images?

Xeddicus · February 2018

Happens on the bookmark page, this page, main forum page, any page on the domain it seems (forums.penny-arcade.com). FF does says "parts" yeah, so it could be something specific I guess.

The main site works fine, just the forums saying it.

Smasher · February 2018

While there is some mixed content (the images in the header for Penny Arcade/The Trenches/etc. are served via http), I'm seeing a valid certificate and secure connection on my end with Chrome 64, Windows 10. Look at the certificate by doing the following:

- Open the Chrome dev tools with control + shift + I. This will pop open a new window.
- At the top of the window there will be some tabs starting with "Elements", "Console", and "Sources". Open the "Security" tab.
- In the middle of the pane you should see a section about the certificate. Mine says "Valid Certificate", though you'll probably see something else. There should be a View Certificate button; if so click it, which will open another small window.
- For me the certificate information in the General tab is "Issued to: forums.penny-arcade.com", "Issued by: RapidSSL SHA256 CA - G3", and "Valid from 9/30/2015 to 10/3/2018". If you click the Certification Path tab I see "GeoTrust Global CA" -> "RapidSSL SHA256 CA - G3" -> "forums.penny-arcade.com".

If you're accessing the forums from work, corporations often inspect https traffic by effectively performing a man-in-the-middle attack. Normally they install a certificate on your computer to make it trust the company certificate authority, but if you don't have that your computer won't recognize the presented certificate as valid.

Xeddicus · February 2018

In the security tab, as you expected, I get:

This page is not secure (broken HTTPS).
Certificate - missing
This site is missing a valid, trusted certificate (net::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID).

But the certificate info all matches yours and it says it's OK.

I'd suspect it's a bug in the dev version of Chrome, but Firefox stable 58.0.1 (that just updated when I checked it... now 58.0.2) says it's not secure either.

This is a home connection.

Edit: Workaround of adding the -–ignore-certificate-errors flag solves the nag screen, but probably not the best idea to keep that there...

Smasher · February 2018

Do you have another computer or phone you can test with?

Xeddicus · February 2018

Phone is saying fine. Android 6.0.

Fire tablet says it's fine too.

Switching to Chrome stable removes the nag screen, but like Firefox notes it's unsecure, but it also says the certificate is OK right off, but mixed content.

Xeddicus · February 2018

Now on a totally different PC at a different location and same warning note so it seems I just never noticed the forums aren't secure and the newer versions of Chrome are more paranoid about security.

Hevach · February 2018

Xeddicus wrote: »

Now on a totally different PC at a different location and same warning note so it seems I just never noticed the forums aren't secure and the newer versions of Chrome are more paranoid about security.

After trying a few different browsers, Edge seems to give the best explanation - the cerficiate is OK, but the connection is not encrypted.

Which explains why Chrome in particular is having a hissy, since that's the particular new expectation Chrome 68 is supposed to impose.

LD50 · February 2018

So you guys are aware, the connection is encrypted. The error that you are seeing is because portions of the page (people signatures, images linked from other domains, etc) are not hosted by Vanilla, and are not covered by the certificate for the page (and thus are not encrypted). Nobody but you can read the webpage itself, but technically an attacker could see the externally hosted stuff (and potentially modify it).

It seems like some of the page elements (the pa logo buttons at the top of the page) are hosted on the PA CDN and are triggering the warning.

P10 · April 2018

i'm having mixed content issues even for stuff that i believe is hosted by vanilla - avatars hosted on *.v-cdn.net, which seems to have (or have had?) a security certificate when I look at cached images, are being blocked as insecure

P10 · May 2018

at least in my case this seems to be because vanilla is using old GeoTrust/symantec issued certificates (which new versions of browsers no longer recognize as valid) for the files they host on their cdn, while the forums themselves have been moved over to the new DigiCert issued certificates

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