SSL oddity

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zkarj

36 posts

Geek

#181075 1-Oct-2015 15:02

I've got an SSL certificate warning suddenly appeared on my Mac and I'm wondering whether it's sinister or some weirdness from my UFB router.

The router is a Huawei HG630b on Spark fibre.

Here's the error.

This software has been running 24x7 for over a week with no issues and I haven't made any OS updates in that time (I'm on the GM of OS X 10.11 which released to the public today).

My network is 192.168.1.* and the router is at .254

What's going on here?

xcubed

194 posts

Master Geek

ID Verified

Lifetime subscriber

#1398101 1-Oct-2015 15:54

It doesn't look sinister, in that the certificate does not purport to be from someone else (like Microsoft Web Security Department), nor is it pretending to be from sync.omnigroup.com.
I suspect the router wants to show or ask you something (like maybe there's a software update available, or it's unable to connect), and it chose to do that by hijacking your web traffic to display an interstitial message, which is not ideal.

The other possibility is that your router offers some web filtering, or web caching functionality that it implements by MITMing all web traffic, but that seems unlikely as you say you haven't seen this before.

zkarj

36 posts

Geek

#1398127 1-Oct-2015 16:27

I tried rebooting the router and the same software now has no problem. But is the router intercepting my traffic?

roobarb

653 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#1398130 1-Oct-2015 16:29

Have you bypassed DNS normally offered by the router?

zkarj

36 posts

Geek

#1398133 1-Oct-2015 16:34

xcubed: It doesn't look sinister

Oops. Didn't see your reply before posting again. Thanks.

I can't see anywhere it's suggesting a firmware upgrade and I have pretty much all services turned off apart from DHCP.

skewt

750 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1398135 1-Oct-2015 16:36

Your Date and Time is still correct on the machine?

zkarj

36 posts

Geek

#1398143 1-Oct-2015 16:44

roobarb: Have you bypassed DNS normally offered by the router?

Just checked. Nope. Both wifi and ethernet are using the router as DNS.

Further to the firmware question, Spark's site references an update from Nov 2014 which predates my install and is the same version I have on the router now, so that's up to date.

I should add that at the time the problem occurred I was unable to get to the router's admin interface but it is now fine after the reboot. So perhaps it just had a glitch of some sort.

zkarj

36 posts

Geek

#1398144 1-Oct-2015 16:46

skewt: Your Date and Time is still correct on the machine?

It is now, and I believe it was at the time. I haven't rebooted this machine in the meantime so every reason to believe so. No idea if the router time was correct at the time of issue.