July 5, 2016

Starbucks buys their TLS certs on fiscal year boundaries?

This screenshot is from just after agreeing to the Terms of Service for the Google/Starbucks free wifi at the Starbucks at Bryn Mawr and Winthrop in Chicago. My best guess at an explanation is that Starbucks buys their TLS certificates on fiscal year boundaries, but then they’re very busy around the end of the fiscal year and forget to renew? 🙂

close-up view of 1 July TLS cert expiration, shown on 5 July

Either that or the wifi here is being hijacked by devious delinquents determined to defenestrate my data. But I’m not worried — between certificate pinning and SSH host-key checking, surely nothing could possibly go wrong.

Here’s the full screenshot:

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