December 6, 2024

Archives for May 2009

Usable security irony

I visited Usable Security (the web page for the 2007 Usability Security workshop) today to look up a reference, except the link I followed was actually the SSL version of the page. Guess what?

Secure Connection Failed

usablesecurity.org uses an invalid security certificate.
The certificate expired on 12/29/08 12:21 AM.

(Error code: sec_error_expired_certificate)

  • This could be a problem with the server’s configuration, or it could be someone trying to impersonate the server.
  • If you have connected to this server successfully in the past, the error may be temporary, and you can try again later.

How many other web sites out there have the same problem? Using SSL, all the time, is clearly a good thing from a security perspective. There’s a performance issue, of course, but then there’s this usability problem from the server admin’s perspective.