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The way NOT to write HTTPS server

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Note: posted under rant tag, so you are warned ;)

I've just got a new wi-fi router, DIR-655 from DLink. Seems like a nice router, but at least one feature is just plain horrible broken. And it is security feature, which makes me wonder how secure the rest of the code is.

The router can be accessed and managed using HTTP server, like most any other one. It also has an option to enable HTTPS server, which was probably supposed to make management more secure. This is not very important if you connect from local network, but very important if you do remote management from the internet.

So I decided to enable it and connect using HTTPS. Internet explorer immediately complained that there are problems with certificate and advised me against proceeding :). IE warned me that (1) the certificate cannot be validated, (2) the certificate has expired, and (3) the certificate was issued to incorrect site. I proceeded nevertheless, checked the certificate, and indeed - it is self-signed, expired in September 2008, and issued to site www.dlink.com, which is obviously different from 192.168.0.1 :). Worse, I asked other guys with same router to compare certificate hash - it turned out all the routers are shipped with the same certificate!

I can understand the self-signing nature of the certificate - obviously DLink cannot put real certificate to the router. But why has it expired, shared by all routers, and most bizzar - why it indicates www.dlink.com as site name?

They could have easily generated an individual certificate for each router, issued to correct internal IP address for internal-facing server and to DynDNS name for internet-facing server. It does not add any hardware cost; the software could just generate a random self-signed certificate the very first time the router boots with a new configuration. User could then configure his browser to trust this particular certificate, and know he connects to his own router, not any of the thousands other routers with same certificate.

The way they did this feature, it is totally broken and makes no sense at all.