Security Basics mailing list archives

Fake Security Certificate


From: Muhammad Saqib <devj.nullj () gmail com>
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2014 11:15:19 +0500

Hello All

I am in a little bit of fix relating to security of my office email
and thought to seek advice of community here.

I work in a small company and our office email is hosted on Google. A
few days ago, I tried to change the password of my email and instead
of opening the usual Google page for password change, it redirected me
to passwordchange.mycompanydomain.com and my browser told me that the
security certificate of this webpage cannot be trusted. nslookup
passwordchange.mycompanydomain.com revealed that this webpage is
indeed hosted by the server managed by our system administrator.
Obviously, the password change link in the Google mail has been
redirected to this webpage by our system administrator who is also
responsible for managing and hosting of office email on Google and has
the rights to edit such information.

I would like to ask:

1. Is this something which I should ignore and continue with my email
as earlier?

2. One possible reason for system administrator to do this could be
enabling single sign on service for the users i.e. same password for
email and the domain log on on office computers. By collecting the
password from the email, the system admin can save the same password
for domain log on. However, is this excuse good enough to allow for
such practice?

3. Even if it is being used for single sign on, isn't there any way
that an application using a trusted certificate can be used for this
purpose?

I would greatly appreciate your expert opinion on this.


Regards

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