Timeline for What can my university see by installing a CA root certificate on my computer, even when I'm using a VPN?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| May 22, 2020 at 8:54 | comment | added | Pedro | You can check whether your TLS comms are being intercepted by observing the certificates issued by the server you are contacting. Test this on and off your VPN. If the hierarchy ends at a univ issued CA, then they are intercepting comms. If it ends up in a mutually trusted root CA (like let's encrypt or something) then it isn't. This is a feature of PKI. Also, you don't need to use the DNS you're issued, you are free to use other servers directly as long as the network admin hasn't blocked this. | |
| Jan 19, 2015 at 21:54 | comment | added | cpast | @mgjk OSes typically trust either almost no CAs to verify a RADIUS server, or actually no CAs to verify a RADIUS server. You just about always have to manually accept the certificate for that specific network. | |
| Jan 19, 2015 at 21:49 | comment | added | mgjk | It's strange to me that the cert they asked you to install was signed by Thawte. Thawte is usually a trusted CA in all browsers. | |
| Jan 19, 2015 at 21:41 | comment | added | Mike | The names of the certificates were Thawte Premium Server CA and thawte Primary Root CA. When installing, it looked vaguely like the image you showed. Both certificates are under one profile in the System Preferences application. | |
| Jan 19, 2015 at 21:38 | answer | added | cpast | timeline score: 4 | |
| Jan 19, 2015 at 21:34 | answer | added | sandyp | timeline score: 0 | |
| Jan 19, 2015 at 21:34 | comment | added | cpast | What were the names of the certificates? And did it say "install?" Or did it look vaguely like this? | |
| Jan 19, 2015 at 21:33 | comment | added | Mike | Also, they installed two certificates on my machine. One seems to be a server certificate and one says it's a root certificate. What does this mean? I know very little about certificates. | |
| Jan 19, 2015 at 21:26 | comment | added | Mike | I had to agree to accept a CA in the connection process. Once you delete the certificate, you can no longer use their wifi until you reinstall it. | |
| Jan 19, 2015 at 21:09 | comment | added | cpast | Did you have to install a CA by them, or did you have to agree to accept a CA in the connection process? AFAIK, many OSes don't have any certificates trusted to verify wifi networks by default. | |
| Jan 19, 2015 at 21:05 | history | edited | Mike | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
One additional question
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| Jan 19, 2015 at 21:04 | review | First posts | |||
| Jan 19, 2015 at 21:29 | |||||
| Jan 19, 2015 at 20:59 | history | asked | Mike | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
