The VideoLAN Forums

Suddenly tonight, my browser (Firefox 3.6.15) is reporting the forums as having an expired security certificate and doesn't want me to connect. I get the same result in IE 8 on Windows 7.

This is in response to a link in an e.mail telling me of an update to a forum thread I'm subscribed to. If I come here manually through the VideoLan website, there aren't any problems. (The link is https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.ph ... 9&e=292539)

I have no expertise in these matters, so I'm not trying to be alarmist, just trying to work out what's happening, and wondering if others have seen the same behaviour.

As far as I can tell (again, as a novice), it's not redirecting my browser anywhere other than here. I've cleared my browser cache, and run full scans with both a current anti-virus and Malwarebytes - they found nothing.

Any other suggestions, please, anybody?

Install cacert.org certificate

Install cacert.org certificate

I'm sorry, I don't know what that means.

Why is this suddenly happening?
And why is it only happening on links to watched threads, not when I come here manually?

Because you usually come with http, not https

Thanks for the reply, but I still don't know what you mean. In the sense that, I don't know what certificates are, and I don't understand why this is happening now and hasn't happened before. Has something expired?

I'm following a link from the forums themselves, notifying me of an update in a thread. Why do I need to install a 3rd-party certificate, when I haven't needed to previously? And it's happening in both IE and Firefox, so presumably the problem is at the forum, not in a specific browser on my system.

Usually, you come here with http://, meaning no encryption and no security.
If you come to https://, you have encryption and the certificate mess. It is possible that the mails give the https:// link and not the http:// one.

I think it would be useful to have all login and session related traffic automatically redirected to HTTPS and use a certificate that is recognized by all browsers out there. I just realized that no HTTPS was in use here after following a link from the forum sent by mail. Not so good. Contact me for any questions, perhaps I can help.

Install Cacert certificates.

Thanks for the reply, but I still don't know what you mean. In the sense that, I don't know what certificates are, and I don't understand why this is happening now and hasn't happened before.

in case they wonder how...

We are sorry, but currently that's still 'normal' as mainstream browsers don't automatically include the CAcert Root Certificate yet.

http://wiki.cacert.org/FAQ/BrowserClients
Certificate errors: frequently asked questions