ssl_error_ssl2_disabled error or the adventures of access internet in a hotel
Last evening I checked into a very popular hotel in Bangalore. I was fascinated by the lavish suites and all the jazz.
Soon my fascination for the real world stopped and I wanted to get on to the internet. As soon as I tried to connect to the internet, I got the following error in my browser:
WTF? I don’t have that crap (IE) with me and would never want to install it either.
However I realized that I could trick the server, by setting my browser’s user agent to IE 7.
Just as I was celebrating my smartness, I hit the next roadblock:
Turns out that the 24Online service uses SSL v2 (Secure Sockets Layer 2.0), which of course was deprecated since the collapse of the roman empire.
I could not figure out how to enable this on safari or chrome. Suddenly I remembered, I could go to the about:config tab in Firefox and poke around there.
Tried filtering on security.*ssl2 and to my surprise found a config property called security.enable_ssl2. Tried turning it on. No luck!
Tried enabling the various encryption algorithms for the protocol/certificate:
Yahoo! I was able to move to the next hurdle.
Finally I saw Firefox warning me about accessing the site with a fake certificate. I added the certificate to the exception list and there it was, The WWW. Finally I was connect!