SOLVED Windows 10 Forum Configured Wrong?

[Norton]

I just clicked on my desktop shortcut to Log into the forum and was denied access I received this message.

I had to go into the notification "Advanced" accept and save the Windows 10 Forum certificate.
The Forum on my PC was doing some very strange things around 3PM, the forum page just went blank and I was unable to click on any open tabs. I just logged off. Now I just got this warning from Mozzila
about the the forum. See the 3 conditions above for denial
I'm really concerned, as it maybe bye bye Norton. Any ideas would be helpful.
Further
I just noticed the Green security lock now has a Yellow triangle, when I hover, it says "You have added a security exception for this site.

 

[Regedit32]

Hi Norton.

Our site was under attack from idiots posting multiple spams in foreign languages.

Ian has had to increase security to help prevent that.

It may be that increased security that has affected the certificate. We'll have to wait until Ian arrives to confirm.

 

[Norton]

Regedit Thanks! He may have changed some security settings?
The message I got said that the forum certificate expired on April 18th 2017. BTW Ian was on the forum this afternoon when the forum suddenly went blank and wouldn't refresh.

 

[Wolfie]

Anyone that is looking for an answer to a question and isn't tech savvy might just go to another (different) forum?.

See also:

https://www.windows10forums.com/threads/certifcate-error-on-forum-website.13794/

 

[Ian]

Yes, sadly it looks like our control panel software hadn't renewed the SSL certificate automatically - which will no doubt have alarmed anyone seeing that message. I'm seeing why this has happened, as it should automatically renew a month before it expires.

I'll work on coding a SSL expiry alert e-mail so I can manually confirm that it's going to work correctly, next time it comes around (2 months time).

 

[Ian]

It looks like I've found the issue - when the control panel renews the SSL certificate, it creates a temporary directory on the website so that the certificate authority can validate the URL. As we've got our security settings set so tightly, the directory wasn't allowed to be created, so the authorisation check failed and the SSL certificate wasn't renewed.

I've added a manual exclusion for that directory, so it should work when it tries to renew next time around. I'm also going to tweak our monitoring software to alert me to anything going wrong with SSL, as I didn't get any alerts overnight which should normally happen (as the sites are working fine, technically - but browsers will display warnings for expired certificates).

 

[Norton]

Ian Thanks a bunch I see we now have a secure forum. I was gob struck when I saw the failed to connect message yesterday.

 

[Regedit32]

Much appreciated Ian.

You've had a tough week dealing with some nonsense here.


We appreciate your efforts and the sacrifices on personal time you have to make to make this Forum run.

 

[Norton]

Administering a forum takes a dedicated person.
Thanks Ian for your commitment to your members and the Windows 10 community.

 

[Ian]

Thanks folks - we wouldn't have a forum without you guys and all of the mods .

Although I'm not always posting as much as I'd like, I'm always working to fix things and keep the site running smoothly in the background.

I've switched from Pingdom to Site24x7 monitoring, which includes SSL checks as part of their package. Should anything like that happen again (and hopefully it won't), I'll be notified with a quick phone call so I can fix it asap.

 

[Defender01]

You guys do a great job
I administer a few macro photography groups and i know how much work goes on behind the scenes.

 

[Wolfie]

Thanks to all on this forum for the help that has been given to me thus far, I am not an expert in Windblows (I used Linux for years).

W10 seems to be heading in the right direction as long as they stop all their nonsense with only wanting people to install software from their store and switching the privacy buttons to off by default!.