Firefox3

Firefox 3 and Certificates

Read this if you are experiencing trouble accessing our software pages with Firefox 3

Problem Description

The recently released version 3 of Mozilla Firefox can cause trouble when trying to access encrypted web-sites such as our software pages. When accessing the encrypted page for the first time, Firefox 3 could show an alert message "www.cebitec.uni-bielefeld.de:443 uses an invalid security certificate".

The reason for this is that we are using a certificate that is not issued by an officially recognized Certification Authority (CA). Certificates are used to identify the provider of a secure web-site. Instead of purchasing such a certificate from a commercial CA accepted by Mozilla, we use a so certificate signed by the CeBiTec.

Due to reasons of cost efficiency we do not intend to purchase a commercial certificate for our servers. However, Firefox 3 is now much more restrictive when it comes to unrecognized CAs. We intend to obtain a certificate from the CA of the Deutsche Forschungs-Netz (DFN). Unfortunately, this CA (or better German Telekom which is the root CA for DFN) is still not recognized by Mozilla. See the Mozilla bug report https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=378882 to get an impressive overview of the certification process.

Solution

To access our software you may want to follow the procedure outlined below. This has to be done only once. We apologize for any confusion caused by this.

• In the alert box, click OK

• Click Or you can add an exception...

• Click Add Exception

• In the following dialogue click Get Certificate

• After the certificate has loaded, check the Permanently store exception checkbox. Otherwise, the procedure has to be repeated after each browser start.
• Click Confirm Security Exception
• The software page should appear, this has only to be done once for all cebitec pages