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Upcoming Events
Sat 30 March
09:00-17:00
Sun 31 March
09:00-17:00
Mon 1 April
15:00-19:15
Sat 6 April
Sat 13 April
09:00-17:00
Certificate Authority Information
There is NOT a problem with the certificate from sailing.mit.edu. If your web browser complains that there is a problem, please install the MIT Certificate Authority.
More Information
The MIT Sailing Pavilion website uses certificates in order to
- Identify itself as the valid sailing.mit.edu website
- Encrypt information between the server and your computer
A Certificate Authority is an entity authorized to sign certificates for other organizations. When a certificate authority signs a certificate, that indicates that the signee can be trusted. Instead of having to say "I trust A and B and C" you can simply say "I trust X", then A, B, and C will be trusted as well (assuming they are signed by X).
Modern web-browsers have a pre-installed list of trusted Certificate Authorities. The MIT Certificate Authority is not in that list. The pre-installed list is for comercial companies; non-profits, like MIT, are not in that list. Therefore, the browser does not know by default that the sailing.mit.edu certificate is valid.
The MIT Certificate Authority has signed the certificate for sailing.mit.edu. So when you load the certificate from the MIT Certificate Authority, you indicate that you trust the MIT Certificate Authority and anything signed by that authority, including the sailing.mit.edu certificate.
To bypass warnings temporarily
Click on "Continue to this website" or follow the steps to "add an exception", depending on your browser.
Install the MIT Certificate Authority
Click on MIT Certificate Authority, select "Open" (if asked), and follow the steps to install the MIT CA with authority to "identify websites".
You can read more about it at:
- General: http://ist.mit.edu/services/certificates/guide#site
- IE7: http://ist.mit.edu/services/software/ie/7x/xp-certificates#ca
- Safari: http://ist.mit.edu/services/software/safari/3x/macosx105/certificates#mitca
- Firefox: http://ist.mit.edu/services/software/firefox/certificates#mitca
Using Certificates
When asked to "Choose a digital certificate", if you do not have any other certificates you can click either "OK" or "Cancel", it does not matter. If you have other (non-MIT) certificates, please click "Cancel".