[LINK] Trustworthiness of Declarations of Untrustworthiness

[Roger Clarke]

At 13:52 +1100 14/11/11, Jan Whitaker wrote:
>You do now there is an extra W in the address, right?

That must have been my typing of the email.

I'd keyed just 'nab.com.au'.

That was re-directed to 'www.nab.com.au'.

I then clicked on the 'Internet Banking - Login' button.

And that popped up the usual window that prompts for 'NAB Id" and 
Password, but then overlaid it with what I described (and mis-typed).

In checking it just then, it gave the same error-message as it did 
the first time this morning, but not the second time, i.e. it's 
intermittent.


Change the subject to:

Trustworthiness of *Inconsistent* Declarations of Untrustworthiness ...


________________________________________________________________________

At 10:20 AM 14/11/2011, Roger Clarke you wrote:

I bank with the NAB.  Their Internet Banking works okay-ish.

This morning I did it the usual way - typing nab.com.au into my browser-window.

But it did something different today.

It said"
>Safari can't verify the identity of the website "wwww.nab.com.au"

When I had a peek at the details, I found that you can't copy and
paste the contents.  Another brilliant piece of programming, that is.

It says (typing errors possible):

www.nab.com.au
Issued by: VeriSign Class 3 Extended Validation SSL SGC CA
Expires: Thursday, 19 January 2012 1:59&:ss z
[The & is actually one of those odd marks I don't know much about -
like a capital 'S' the morning after, when you can't focus properly]

But the clincher is, in red:
This certificate was signed by an unknown authority.


The message didn't crop up in Firefox.

I came back later using Safari, and it didn't appear the second time.

So is a mug punter meant to trust the declaration of
untrustworthiness that was provided by Safari?


--
Roger Clarke                                  http://www.rogerclarke.com/

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                     Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
  mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University
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Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog:  http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business:  http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

_ __________________ _


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University