Not like I was even looking, when this hot afternoon, I came upon the picture-sharing website and got to know that its SSL certificate was overdue for renewal. My first impression - when I saw my Chrome browser render an SSL warning - was that some malicious person was trying some sort of foul play. However, upon a little further investigation, I got to find out that indeed, the SSL certificate for Instagram (https://instagram.com) is expired as at the time of writing this post (W.A.T: 1 p.m., 30th April, 2015).
Personally, I'm absolutely surprised. Like, we tech people in this part of the world always look up to our Western counterparts as champions of standard practice. If I had heard it in the news, I would have struggled with believing, just like I had struggled with believing a friend who, yesterday, let me know how he once went 21 days, back-to-back, without taking any food or drink. He seemed sincere enough though, and I'm starting to believe that indeed, truth is stranger than fiction. I wonder now, what I should think of those articles which told me that a human cannot survive without water for more than, what, was it seven days?
Anyway, this just goes to show that, humanity, no matter how close to perfection we come, will still have its fallibility. I can imagine some admin guy in Silicon valley right now, scrambling about to get this fixed immediately. I might be wrong though. Perhaps, the nature of instagram makes it such that the vulnerability due to an expired SSL certificate is not significant. For a web app of its scale though, I'd like to think otherwise. Perhaps, they are not even aware of the error yet. Could this be my chance to be the hero from Nigeria who saves Instagram's face by preventing the leak of a billion nude pictures into the dark wild web? Not like I'm bothered enough to find out anyway.
My major moral takeaway from this discovery?
"No mistake is too big to beat yourself up over. Dust your coat and move on, everyone messes up."
EDIT:
As at 3 p.m. W.A.T, same day, the certificate has been renewed with one which is valid till October. Admin guy to the rescue *thumbs up*
