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How can I tell which servers are safe in certificate manager please?)

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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Hello, While looking through my computer, in the Certificate Manager I noticed there were a few Certificate names that I know nothing about. There were 5 but I deleted the DigiNotar Cyber CA after reading that Mozilla/FireFox no longer trust them. The others are Entrust.net - Equifax Secure Inc. - GTE Corporation and The USERTRUST Network.

Do these all need to be on my computer?

Any help appreciated.

Cheers, Jack Cat

Hello, While looking through my computer, in the Certificate Manager I noticed there were a few Certificate names that I know nothing about. There were 5 but I deleted the DigiNotar Cyber CA after reading that Mozilla/FireFox no longer trust them. The others are Entrust.net - Equifax Secure Inc. - GTE Corporation and The USERTRUST Network. Do these all need to be on my computer? Any help appreciated. Cheers, Jack Cat

Chosen solution

In Tools > Options > Advanced : Encryption: Certificates you have to differentiate between Authorities and Servers. My approach: as long as Authorities include only certificates of the "Builtin Object Token" and "Software Security device" type, I implicitly trust Mozilla and the ex-factory Firefox only.

Servers are then secondary - for instance DigiNotar experienced a serious breach some time ago and as a result - in the chem spill release of Firefox a day later - was dropped from the Authorities list. However, the DigiNotar server can still be included, as a repository for certificates by other "authorities"-trusted CAs.

If this does not allay your fears, you can always reset the Firefox to its ex-factory state as follows:

Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings

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Chosen Solution

In Tools > Options > Advanced : Encryption: Certificates you have to differentiate between Authorities and Servers. My approach: as long as Authorities include only certificates of the "Builtin Object Token" and "Software Security device" type, I implicitly trust Mozilla and the ex-factory Firefox only.

Servers are then secondary - for instance DigiNotar experienced a serious breach some time ago and as a result - in the chem spill release of Firefox a day later - was dropped from the Authorities list. However, the DigiNotar server can still be included, as a repository for certificates by other "authorities"-trusted CAs.

If this does not allay your fears, you can always reset the Firefox to its ex-factory state as follows:

Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings

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smo, thank you for your help, problem solved. Cheers, Jack Cat

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Note that you may have actually removed the DigiNotar block exceptions button then you would have noticed that those certificates are untrusted permanently ("Do not trust the authenticity of this certificate").