At the end of October Google announced plans to disable fall back to version 3 of the SSL protocol in Chrome 39, and remove SSL 3.0 completely in Chrome 40. The decision follows the company’s disclosure of a serious security vulnerability in SSL 3.0 on October 14, the attack it dubbed Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption (POODLE). [SOURCE: www.venturebeat.com]
What does this mean in understandable language?
Some SU webpages were built on the Oracle infrastructure and make use of SSL protocol. This means that, if you use Google Chrome as your default browser, you might have problems accessing certain information. If you go to my.sun.ac.za and want to browse to Sun-e-HR, Exam results, meal reservations, etc. you might not be successful.
However, if you use Firefox or Internet Explorer, you won’t experience any hiccups. Alternatively you can use m.sun.ac.za to access selected options. This is only a temporary issue.
Information Technology will be working on a solution which involves an upgrade of portal software over this weekend. Due to this maintenance, some services will not be available from Saturday, 6 December at 12:00, as well as the whole of Sunday.
Services affected are all portal applications, my.sun.ac.za, Sun-e-HR, etc. OIC will also be down, therefore no payments can be made and the change password functionality will also not be available.
We hope to complete this action as soon as possible and provide a better service to users when it’s completed.
For any enquiries, send e-mail to helpinfo@sun.ac.za or call x4367.
