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back to article Discover potholes in the information super-highway with this handy new tool (which itself just hit a roadblock)

Are we taking the internet for granted? And by "internet" we mean the actual global networks of computers that share vast quantities of information every second by using the same basic protocols. A long-planned security upgrade of the global domain name system planned for earlier this month was postponed because 11th-hour …

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  1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
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    Time to update that certificate, but otherwise

    Interesting stuff.

    So what's how many "middle boxes" is the UK showing?

    2 1 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Time to update that certificate, but otherwise

      Bit sad really - there is no need to leave SSL certs to expire. Either use a browser occasionally, a proper monitoring system or even download this: https://www.monitoring-plugins.org/doc/man/check_http.html and run it from a cron job.

      $ ./check_http -H observatory.mami-project.eu -C 14

      SSL Version: TLSv1.2

      CRITICAL - Certificate 'observatory.mami-project.eu' expired on Wed Sep 27 10:53:00 2017.

      6 0 Reply
      1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge
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        Re: Time to update that certificate, but otherwise

        you see it time and time again though. Usually on in house systems , or in house systems of people you deal with, rather than the big boys. You'd think it could be averted using , say , a calendar or something.

        0 0 Reply
        1. Anonymous Coward
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          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Time to update that certificate, but otherwise

          Calendar? What, a recurring appointment style of thing? Madness.

          For extra points make sure it is created by someone with their personal account rather than a shared one, who moves on a few weeks later ...

          3 0 Reply
        2. Gene Cash Silver badge
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          Re: Time to update that certificate, but otherwise

          Most of the time I see bad certs, it's not expired but misconfigured with an illegal wildcard or just the plain wrong DNS name. It's sad how many people can't get the name of their own damned network right.

          2 0 Reply
          1. Charles 9
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            Re: Time to update that certificate, but otherwise

            Some people have fat fingers. They hit one key and accidentally hit an adjacent key as well. Plus given the minimum accepted typing rate, things tend to slip through.

            0 0 Reply

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