Rated 5 out of 5 stars

by SomeRandomGal7 on Sept. 27, 2014 ·

No average user should need this—if you see a padlock in your URL-bar, you have a secure connection and are okay to communicate securely on the Internet.

For security enthusiasts, it highlights something that may present itself as a weak link in secure (SSL/TLS) connections. Browsers do not individually ensure websites are who they say they are; they delegate this to a select number of "Certificate authorities" or CAs (given at https://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/certs/included/) that, in turn, vouch for the validity and security of websites. We don't generally see CAs that approve websites like PayPal.com or StateFarm.com unless we open up the page dialog (http://mzl.la/Mk9DSW).

The extension displays these hidden Certificate Authorities in the add-on bar, grouped by country, and the bottom-level Certificate Authority for any given secure site. This should be enough for anybody concerned about "rogue CAs" they may distrust and would want to watch.

For a primer on secure connections, read http://mzl.la/MDvkxK or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Secure. An add-on that might be of interest is Calomel SSL Validator, which can be found at https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/207653/.

...Is it just me, or does the "when I click the Statusbar, do..." option box have no choices other than "Nothing"?