ignore invalid ssl certificate (chrome, ff or other browser)

Question

I teach a class in a school that has a massive amount of computers, and, of course, some IT problems are bound to happen.

One day, I wanted to use a computer to show some demonstrations to students. Unfortunately, those demonstrations where on a https domain, and the system clock was not working properly. Because of the time mismatch, chrome refused to show me the page.

Also unfortunately, I did not have enough authorization to correct the clock on the computer.

I know what is going on, and want to ignore the problem as best as possible. That is: with chrome, or another browser, open a site such that the ssl is invalid due to date mismatch.

I understand the general inadvisability of this course of action, but want to take it anyway.

Is there any browser/browser extension/setting that will allow me to do that?

If not, is there a browser setting to use a time different from system time?

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The first available idea, unfortunately, does not work on my situation (wrong system time). The 'badidea' cheat code does not work for this :(

More ideas most welcome

Solution

On Chrome, you can bypass most SSL and security warnings by typing badidea while viewing the warning page. This override is not persistent; it only affects the current browser tab.

On Firefox, you can bypass SSL warnings by clicking the "Advanced" button on the page, clicking the "Add Exception" button at the bottom of that, then clicking "Confirm Security Exception" in the certificate status dialog. This override is persistent by default.

If you want to try out these techniques on a properly configured computer, there's a set of tests available at https://badssl.com/. For example, https://expired.badssl.com/ has an expired SSL certificate.

As an aside, you should ask your system administrator to fix the system time issue, ideally by enabling network time synchronization. Having the time set significantly wrong will cause issues accessing many web sites -- not just your site -- and may cause other system functionality to fail.

Comments

[garethTheRed]

+1 simply for the badidea info. I never knew that :-)

[josinalvo]

Thanks! Unfortunately, it seems that, for a wrong system clock, the cheat code does not work... Instead, it insists that I change the system clock