Closed Bug 478708 Opened 16 years ago Closed 16 years ago

untrusted certificate at started even when opening blank page

Categories

(Firefox :: General, defect)

x86
Windows XP
defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

()

VERIFIED INCOMPLETE

People

(Reporter: miamitenou, Unassigned)

Details

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009011913 Firefox/3.0.6 Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009011913 Firefox/3.0.6 192.168.0.1:443 uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is not trusted because the issuer certificate is not trusted. The certificate is only valid for <a id="cert_domain_link" title="WRT54G">WRT54G</a> (Error code: sec_error_untrusted_issuer) I get this message EVERY time I load up Firefox even when opening a blank page Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.start up FireFox 2.after a few seconds the error message pops up 3 times 3.cannot open sites till after all 3 messages are clicked (OK) and if another window pops up am unable to click any remaining error windows Expected Results: firefox starts up opening the page with no error messages popping up
This is not a security vulnerability in Firefox. Regardless of the page that your browser is configured to display on startup, (even if it's about:blank), each time you start Firefox, it attempts to check to see if there are any urgent security updates. It does this by attempting to contact a Mozilla https web site that serves updates. If you have installed "add ons" or "extensions" to Firefox, they may also check at startup to see if there are any urgent security updates. These attempts to check for security updates use https (SSL). If they find that they have contacted some server other than the one they expect to contact, or they get an SSL server security certificate that is not issued by one of the issuers trusted for this purpose, they display the warnings about security certificates. The appearance of those warnings is not an error or bug in Firefox. They tell you that something in the network to which you are attached has connected you to a different https server than the Firefox update server. The problem that needs to be corrected is the one that causes Firefox's update requests to be sent to some other https server than Mozilla's own. Again, this is generally not a problem in Firefox, but in your computer system or in the network to which you are attached. In your case, your computer evidently is connected to a Linksys WRT54G router, either by wire or by WiFi, and Firefox's update requests are being sent to the https server built into that Linksys router. This is further indicated by the appearance of the IP address 192.168.0.1 in the error message you see. The question you must solve is: why are the requests for Firefox update information being sent to the https server in a Linksys router rather than to Mozilla's update server? There are numerous known possible answers. Here are some possibilities: 1) You are using a wireless Network interface, and you have connected to a WiFi router other than the one to which you normally connect, such as your neighbor's or one in a nearby "hot spot". That router is trying to get you to acccess its web server to get you to login and perhaps pay for use of that network service. In this case, the solution may be to connect to a different router. 2) You have a "hosts" file that is substituting the IP address of your router (192.168.0.1) for the address of Mozilla's update server. In this case, the solution probably is to remove the entries for Mozilla's servers from the hosts file. You can search your "C" drive for a file named "hosts", and look at its contents with notepad. 3. Some sort of network firewall or anti-virus or ad blocking software (or malware) in installed on your computer, software that intercepts all your browser's outgoing https connections in an attempt to filter them in some fashion. It is having this effect of sending your https connections to your router. 4. Some sort of software has been installed on your router that attempts to intercept https traffic, or traffic to web sites in general, and it is having this effect. Finding the particular problem that is having this effect of sending Firefox's update requests to your router (or someone's router) is beyond the scope of Mozilla's bug tracking system. I suggest that you should seek help from a computer expert near to you, one whom you trust.
Group: core-security
The firefox update requests are supposed to fail silently in the case of a bad cert. Could be something else like a "Live Bookmark" (feed) udpate, or the safe-browsing data. But that doesn't explain why it's trying to contact your router, let alone why you're trying to contact your router over SSL. Do you have a "proxy" set up? Any addons? The error itself sort of makes sense: Linksys can't afford to get real SSL certs for their mass-produced routers, and they're intended to be used in a home environment where you can be physically sure you are talking to the right box. Therefore they use self-signed certificates and you're expected to ignore the errors. Do you use a Linksys WRT54G router? If that's not your router and your IP address is not 192.168.0.something then this could be some more nefarious local issue. Even if that is your router, something seems off if Firefox is talking directly to it over SSL -- do you have any non-default networking settings (such as the proxy settings I asked about earlier)? You _could_ make the error messages go away by accepting that self-signed cert as an exception. If we can determine that the reason you're seeing those connections is benign then that would be a safe thing to do. Otherwise it will just hide whatever it is making those odd connections.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 16 years ago
Resolution: --- → INCOMPLETE
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
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