This expired certificate alert just showed up for my GMail account. Apparently Google let the SSL certificate expire for the smtp.gmail.com domain.
In the midst of the current DNS insecurity storm, it's not exactly a good idea.
Has anyone else seen this?
I am getting this too. Who is Thawte, and when you look at the details, why are they listed as being in South Africa? Seems strange...
Um, Thawte is like one of the oldest and best known cert companies out there. And they're based in South Africa. A simply google search before you comment would've helped. As the Bible says "even a few is considered wise when he keeps his mouth shut". :)
That is indeed known, to the few who know this (BTW, Thawte has been acquired by Verisign, a U.S. company, in 1999).
Now put yourself in the shoes of the vast majority of internet users, who not only don't know what Thawte is, even less what a certificate authority is, and who are presented with this alert window. I guess they will be very confused, and suspicious, hence looking for anything that looks unordinary. And a South African address is going to look suspicious, to many North American uninformed eyes at least ;-).
Thawte is one of the main Certificate Authorities out there, and they're indeed headquartered in Cape Town. Their root certificate in my system lists Cape Town as the city, so nothing suspicious here. (It's a small planet, you know. ;-)
This is ridiculous that a company like Google has allowed this to expire. They seem to be dismissive about these types of issues and hide behind the "Beta" designation of their software. If they want to be world-class SAAS provider, they can't have these things happen. I continuously have issues with Outlook "timing" out on the IMAP connection to Google Apps mail, or not being able to access my web- based email because of a "temporary error". I've had calendar and chat issues as well.
For an organization that prides itself on talent, Google certainly isn't showcasing it on the customer facing applications.
Are you only see this in Mac Mail? I've got several systems (both OS X & WinXP) and so far I've only seen it on Mac Mail.
Coincidentally (hopefully) I don't know that Apple has released the DNS patch yet.
I only use Apple Mail, but the validity of the certificate has (normally) nothing to do with the mail client. That's weird.
And yes, it looks like Apple is dragging its feet on that DNS patch, which is unfortunate. That might be telling about the amount of resources currently working on things unrelated to the iPhone and iTunes businesses.