[scripts-announce] https://scripts-cert.mit.edu

[Jeff Arnold]

scripts.mit.edu will be changing how it handles SSL connections and 
certificate authentication in order to support a greater variety of 
applications.  Applications that require certificate authentication should 
now use a URL that starts with https://scripts-cert.mit.edu in order to 
ensure that certificate authentication occurs.  Starting Sunday, February 
5, URLs starting with https://scripts.mit.edu will not trigger certificate 
authentication -- only URLs starting with https://scripts-cert.mit.edu 
will cause certificate authentication to occur.  If you would like us to 
delay this transition, please let us know.

Applications that want to test whether the client accessing the 
application has a valid MIT certificate should check the environment 
variables starting with SSL_CLIENT [1] rather than simply checking whether 
the connection is an SSL connection.

If you have any questions or concerns about this change, please contact us 
by e-mailing scripts at mit.edu.

We generally try to avoid making server changes that can potentially 
require script modifications.  We hope that these kinds of changes will 
become increasingly uncommon as the web script service continues to 
mature.

[1] For details, see https://scripts-cert.mit.edu/~jbarnold/demo/env.pl 
and http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_ssl.html

Jeff Arnold
jbarnold at mit.edu