Subj : Re: Unable to connect to GitHub in Windows XP Pro SP3's IE8 web browse To : All From : V@nguard.LH Date : Sun Jan 06 2019 04:58 am Path: eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!n ewsfeed.kamp.net!newsfeed.kamp.net!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!no t-for-mail From: VanguardLH Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support Subject: Re: Unable to connect to GitHub in Windows XP Pro SP3's IE8 web browser? Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 03:58:17 -0600 Organization: Usenet Elder Lines: 82 Sender: VanguardLH <> Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net x9+crv1LgN+UGLhFMeizNAZltcAcmtjX4yG+7p3C9stxCWbJQ9 Keywords: VanguardLH VLH811 Cancel-Lock: sha1:r2OB+nNqoYla2UwGaZJQdZPZrJI= User-Agent: 40tude_Dialog/2.0.15.41 Xref: mx02.eternal-september.org microsoft.public.windowsxp.general:126572 microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support:31796 Ant wrote on 2016/01/06: Note: The following newsgroups not included in my reply because they are not carried by my Usenet provider (individual.net): microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer microsoft.public.windowsxp > How come I cannot connect to https://github.com/ in 2 different > machines' Windows XP Pro SP3's IE8 web browsers? They show: > > "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage > > Is anyone seeing this problem too? I don't know what to change in the > IE's options. https://help.github.com/articles/supported-browsers/ My recollection is that the base version of Internet Explorer was version 6 included in a fresh install of Windows XP. WinXP came with IE8 and you could not uninstall it (but could hide it) as Windows usually does not let you remove the baseline version (because HTAs - HTML Applications - need the IE libraries). IE9 was the highest version you could install in Windows XP. So you should update from IE8 to IE9. Github's statement says that you cannot connect even if you updated from IE to IE9. That is because the old SSL and use of weak certificates made IE (and other web browsers) vulnerable to malicious use. Many sites requires TLS, a later version of SSL, and removal of the weak certs when you securely connect (via HTTPS) to their site. Github won't let you insecurely connect to them. They demand HTTPS connects. If you try an insecure connect (http://github.com), their server will redirect to a secure connect (https://github.com). So stop using Internet Explorer on Windows XP. Switch to a better web browser that supports TLS and other security methods when connecting to web sites; e.g., Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome (or their variants). My aunt ran into the rejection problem with her Windows XP and using Internet Explorer 9 many months ago. There was a stink back then about using weak "secure" connects that could be exploited. She now uses Firefox and has no problems connecting to any of the previously problematic HTTPS web sites, plus it renders pages a lot faster with less artifacts (bad painting) in the page's content. Nothing you can change on Windows XP. See below in what you can do in IE. or in the options for Internet Explorer. Those are too old to provide secure (HTTPS) connections for many sites. Some sites still support vulnerable SSL 2.0 connections. SSL 3.0 is basically what is TLS 1.0 but sites are often looking for a specific encryption protocol. Plus sites may require TLS 2.0 at a minimum, so using TLS 1.0 (available back in IE8) and SSL 3.0 won't help. If you go into IE's advanced options under the security section, is there a TLS option you can enable to use that for HTTPS connects? If you disable SSL 3.0, you will find some old sites (old in that they still support SSL) that won't work. You should disable SSL 1.0 and SSL 2.0 and enable SSL 3.0 and leave disabled TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1, and TLS 1.2. Then connect to every domain (not every site within domain) that uses HTTPS (or redirects from HTTP to HTTPS) in your Favorites list to see if any will fail to connect via SSL. Then disable SSL 3.0 and retest. You might find some sites won't connect using SSL 3.0 as they have moved to TLS. So then disable SSL 3.0 and enable all the TLS options. Retest. You might find some sites that are still using SSL 3.0 so you'll have to decide if you want to continue visiting those sites. The TLS options are available in IE9, not IE8. So it is likely that you will need to upgrade from IE8 to IE9 to get HTTPS connects to sites that have upped their security (by getting new site certs). Although you might upgrade to IE9 and ensure the TLS options are enabled (and SSL 2.0, at least, is disabled although SSL 3.0 should be disabled, too), it is possible a site will look at the User-Agent header sent by your web browser. A site can refuse a connection from a web browser of a lesser version than they mandate as the minimum. In that case, you could use the UApick add-on for IE to have it lie in doling out a UA string for a different and new web browser. However, that will also mean the site may alter its HTML code to make it compatible with that reported web browser but results in failures in rendering in your real web browser. When you lie about what web browser you use, the site will assume it can use the HTML applicable to that reported web browser (by brand and version). --- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.1 * Origin: Prison Board BBS Mesquite Tx //telnet.RDFIG.NET www. (1:124/5013) .