Hotmail Security Certificate by French Military Police?

When trying to access my hotmail account, I get a security warning that a security certificate licensed to www.gendcom.info has been installed on the hotmail website. Well, that security certificate belongs to the Gendarmerie Nationale, which is France's military police.

Here are some screen shots of what's going on:



The last screenshot shows that the certificate was issued in South Africa.

Here is some information on www.gendcom.info or Gendarmerie Nationale:
en.wikipedia.org...

Anyone get the same problem? Any idea why the French military police are taking over Hotmail?

[edit on 4-4-2006 by Jamuhn]

I know this thread hasn't been up for long, but I'm hoping someone can confirm this on their end.

I just logged into Hotmail then logged out, twice. Everything looks normal here in Northeast Ohio. You might contact MSN for an explanation.

You sure the certificate popup was for the hotmail site and not for that "Gendcom 2" window you have open next to it?

I opened up the gencom.info website after I got that security certificate alert the first time. I still had it open when I went to take screen shots.

Which hotmail domain were you logging into?

.com .co.uk ....

And where from were you trying to login?

And last but not least, are you aware of any kind of proxy between you and the open internet?

I simply go to hotmail.com and I presented with that alert. And, yes, there is a university proxy between me and the Internet.

I suggest you notify whoever manages that proxy then.

The most likely point of misreferenced (deliberate or accidental) transfer of certificates like this is a proxy in between you and the actual site.

Yea...but would the proxy have the power to switch the security certificate of a website?

The French are committing espionage on our universities!!!

We should start a cyber war and kill their internet and communications for their attempted attack on our countries infrastructure!

Would be cool.

[edit on 6-4-2006 by ImplementOfWar]

Originally posted by Jamuhn
Yea...but would the proxy have the power to switch the security certificate of a website?

Power? A proxy caches content from websites and sends that cached data to its clients instead of the live data from the webpage.
If the data on the real site is changed, it'll recache that data.
For highly active sites like ATS, it'll usualy refresh its data with every request.

So its pritty much just exactly what a proxy does, send out cached data and not the original data. So if the cached data is misplaced or deliberatly wrongly linked it sends out data that doesn't come from the original site.

If your uni has something installed like Websense, it'll replace requests to certain sites with a websense message.

A French security certificate...
I'm sure that will be secure enough to hide behind in case of an invasion.....of privacy

Originally posted by thematrixSo its pritty much just exactly what a proxy does, send out cached data and not the original data. So if the cached data is misplaced or deliberatly wrongly linked it sends out data that doesn't come from the original site.

Right, right. So, it would be possible that the cached content is coming over, but with an altered security certificate? That would account for it not happening to other members.

Assuming this is done with a malicious intent. Would replacing this security certificate with that of Gend. Nationale's enable them to view this private information related to my Hotmail account?