The clock is ticking … 2 more days to 3rd December 2014 – where Paypal will no longer support SSL 3.0 and all would have to upgrade to TLS (Transport Layer Socket). This is because of the POODLE (Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption) Attack saga – a shockwave from the more severed recent Heartbleed & Shellshock vulnerabilities. Wow, those acronyms and technicality caused me a headache!
Been really busy for past weeks, I’ve chosen to “avoid the pain” until a freer period right now to “head-on” with this issue – after all, according to Paypal, I may/will not be able to receive online payments if I do not resolve or upgrade to TLS by the stipulated date.

Luckily, one thing I’ve clarified with Paypal – they called me via a Malaysia number; thought we’ve got Paypal Singapore here – is that who is responsible for this SSL to TLS upgrade thingy and they told me it would be the hosting provider; great! it’s Hostgator and, you guessed it, I’ve contacted their Live Chat.

Great news! Issue solved – Nothing I’ve got to do on my side. Hostgator has well taken care of this issue – that’s more like it. Anyway, from the Live Chat, I’ve got a couple of very good links recommended by the Helpdesk :

https://support.hostgator.com/articles/pre-sales-policies/security-abuse/poodle-attack

https://sslanalyzer.comodoca.com/

For those who have no idea what’s going on, the good news is you probably are not using any SSL anyway and none of your site will be affected. For those, like me, who know we’ve got SSL but still lost, best way is to contact your hosting. In most cases, all good hosting should have patched up this SSL to TLS thingy.

One of the purpose of my this post here is to highlight one point – there are so many pitfalls and new things to learn along the way that no matter how well-versed you thought you are, there are always new things to learn on a continuous basis. Just don’t let all these technical hurdles stop you from learning, earning and living the dream. Do it, do it right and do again.