[100852] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: US Provisioned GSM cards abroad... SSL Issues?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (William Waites)
Thu Nov 15 16:14:59 2007
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 22:15:59 +0100
From: William Waites <ww@styx.org>
To: NANOG <nanog@merit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <20071114181817.3355b498@cs.columbia.edu>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
On Wed, Nov 14, 2007 at 06:18:17PM +0000, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
>
> "Mike Lyon" <mike.lyon@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > Curious. Has anyone on the list here ever encountered issues while
> > traveling in EMEA accessing SSL websites back in the states while
> > using an ATT/Cingular GSM data card? We are seeing some issues with
> > this and were curious to see if anyone else is seeing the same issue.
> >
> Do you have a tcptraceroute? Might some "helpful", "transparent" proxy
> be getting in your way? (You don't say anything about what your issues
> are.)
Such broken "transparent" proxies seem to be very common on GSM carrier's
data networks. I've even recently seen problems that look like a re-direct
loop without ever really hitting the server, with a pre-paid SIM from
Yoigo (a Spanish carrier). Mind you, this was a complex SSL setup involving
client-side certificates, and "normal" SSL sites.
Solution: set up a "good" squid proxy somewhere, perhaps on an uncommon port,
to bypass the "evil" proxy.
Next problem: empty bank account when the roaming charges come home ;)
Cheers,
-w
