CUNY Academic Commons

Regarding the "Your connection is not private" message. This appears because you were redirected at some point to https://swipanalytic.org (note the 's'). The Commons server does not have an SSL certificate associated with that domain - we only support SSL for *.commons.gc.cuny.edu. However, because swipanalytic.org (and all other mapped domains) share the Commons IP address, the following happens:

1. the browser validates the SSL cert associated with the swipanalytic.org IP address
2. The certificate authority sends back info to the effect that the SSL cert is valid for *.commons.gc.cuny.edu
3. The browser sees that there is a mismatch between the domains associated with the cert and the requested domain, so it throws the security error.

At root, this is happening because the certificate authority handshake does not include information about the domain name being requested; on the vanilla configuration, SSL certificates are expected to be served from dedicated IP addresses. We can theoretically work around this requirement by installing and configuring the SNI extension for Apache. I'll open a thread with IT to see if this is possible.

In the meantime, we can attempt to skirt the problem by ensuring that redirects to https://swipanalytic.org never take place. Marilynn, do you remember exactly what you were doing that led you to this error notice? Where in the interface did you click?

Thank you for your work on this, Boone. Sorry it was such a bear.

Hi Boone,

I am not sure exactly where I tried to go to the page from -- it is possible from the 'my sites' dropdown while loggged in on the commons. Sorry I don't fully understand some of the technical language above. Is whatever the issue was basically fixed for my site?

Thank you!
Marilynn

Thanks, Marilynn. If indeed you navigated to the site from 'My Sites', then the problem should now be fixed for you. Please feel free to report back here if you come across related issues.

Will do, thanks!

Hi Boone,

I am writing on this ticket again because the twitter and facebook widgets on the side of the site detailed here, swipanalytic.commons.gc.cuny.edu, seem to have disappeared again. Perhaps something got lost in an update? They were there for a while after this ticket was addressed but I noticed a few weeks ago they were gone.

Thank you!
Marilynn

Hi Matt,

Sorry for the very delayed response to this! I am viewing the page in Firefox with Ad-Blocker Plus active. I noticed that it does work on my ipad, using Safari.

Best,
Marilynn

(Firefox on a PC)