This morning my wife found that she was unable to get into a large number of websites (including many she regularly visits such as google.co.uk) using Firefox under Windows 7 due to the error message:
“Your connection is not secure
The owner of http://www.google.co.uk has configured their web site improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this web site.
This site uses HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) to specify that Firefox only connect to it securely. As a result, it is not possible to add an exception for this certificate.”
A similar error message is given by IE:
“There is a problem with this website’s security certificate.
The security certificate presented by this website was not issued by a trusted certificate authority.
Security certificate problems may indicate an attempt to fool you or intercept any data you send to the server.
We recommend that you close this webpage and do not continue to this website.”
Although most of the websites we’ve tried give the error, not all do. For instance bbc.co.uk loads without issue.
I initially thought it was a Windows 7 issue, as both my Windows 10 laptop and desktop were working without problems. However, having just updated to Firefox 63.0.1 on my laptop I’m now getting the same problem on that in Firefox, Chrome and Edge!
I’m posting this from my desktop, which I think is running an earlier version of Firefox, and is working OK. I can’t post it from the laptop as this forum is one of the affected sites!
I have found an article dated 7 February 2018 in The Register headed “Beware the looming Google Chrome HTTPS certificate apocalypse!” which stated that Chrome and Firefox were to list all Symantec certificates as not being trustworthy from October, but surely major websites will have taken steps to obtain alternative certificates by now?
Does anyone know what is causing our problems, and whether there is a workround?
