Expired Certificates and Wireless Internet Access
I was in the Manchester New Hampshire airport today and powered up my laptop.
There was a wireless signal, and I thought I'd check if there was free Internet access as in some airports. I hate paying to briefly check email.
I was advised:
"login.airportwins.com" is a site that uses a security certificate to
encrypt data during transmission, but its certificate expired on
5/10/2005 7:59 PM.
. . . blah blah . . .
Would you like to continue anyway?
These bozos let their certificate expire??? I clicked on "View certificate" and saw the bozos were apparently "WebCenter Techologies, Inc." and the certificate was issued by RSA Data Security. Looked legit, and like they just forgot to renew their cert.
However they wanted about US$7 for a few minutes of access, so instead I sent them a message, which I could do for free:
"Your certificate has expired. I refuse to signup until it's renewed!"
Letting their certificate expire is a boneheaded move for a commercial enterprise. Especially with current headlines of "Evil Twins exploits" (really nothing new), pharming (multiple definitions available), and phishing (I get almost daily attempts), prospective customers are probably paranoid and hopefully refusing to pay and send their required credit card info!!
There was a wireless signal, and I thought I'd check if there was free Internet access as in some airports. I hate paying to briefly check email.
I was advised:
"login.airportwins.com" is a site that uses a security certificate to
encrypt data during transmission, but its certificate expired on
5/10/2005 7:59 PM.
. . . blah blah . . .
Would you like to continue anyway?
These bozos let their certificate expire??? I clicked on "View certificate" and saw the bozos were apparently "WebCenter Techologies, Inc." and the certificate was issued by RSA Data Security. Looked legit, and like they just forgot to renew their cert.
However they wanted about US$7 for a few minutes of access, so instead I sent them a message, which I could do for free:
"Your certificate has expired. I refuse to signup until it's renewed!"
Letting their certificate expire is a boneheaded move for a commercial enterprise. Especially with current headlines of "Evil Twins exploits" (really nothing new), pharming (multiple definitions available), and phishing (I get almost daily attempts), prospective customers are probably paranoid and hopefully refusing to pay and send their required credit card info!!
posted by Ted Demopoulos at 5:29 PM
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