We’ve received word that a small number of you have recently experienced problems registering for events. Users have reported that the scoutingevent.com site was blocked, and that messages, similar to the following, were popping-up in their browsers:
scoutingevent.com uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is not trusted because the issuer certificate is unknown. The server might not be sending the appropriate intermediate certificates. An additional root certificate may need to be imported. Error code: SEC_ERROR_UNKNOWN_ISSUER
The developer of that software, Black Pug, has looked into the issue and resolved it. Please be aware, however, that a small number of you, primarily users whose internet connection uses OpenDNS, may continue to see intermittent interruptions while the fix is fully implemented.
So, what happened? From their user forum:
www.scoutingevent.com is being blocked for users whose internet connection uses OpenDNS. The issue is that a “bot” flagged us as a phishing site, which led OpenDNS to block us. We’ve successfully challenged this, and OpenDNS now shows our site is not a phishing site, but we’re still waiting for them to allow www.scoutingevent.com traffic. This is affecting a small number of users.
As it says, a bot that has reported over a million phishing sites flagged us. We were in an unverified state (meaning they didn’t know if we were or weren’t a phishing site), but were blocked anyway. As mentioned above, we’ve successfully challenged this and it now says “Verified: This site is not a phishing site.” but it still hasn’t opened traffic.
This is only impacting users whose internet connection uses OpenDNS, which has primarily been (but not limited to) people running OpenVPN (which by default uses OpenDNS).
Again, this issue does not appear to be widespread. However, if you’re still experiencing difficulties, please reach out and let us know, and we’ll do our best to help you as quickly as we can. We regret any inconvenience this may have caused, and thank you for your patience.