Connect to a HTTPS secure website and ping the lat

问题:

My code currently tries to ping a URL the user provide. It works fine with non-HTTPS websites. But if I try with something like: https://www.httpsnow.org/ I get an exception: Could not establish connection. Error is: 'sun.security.validator.ValidatorException: PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target'

Code below:

try
   {
   long startTime = DateProvider.getCurrentTimeMillis();

   huc = getConnection(url);
   huc.setRequestMethod("GET");
   huc.setConnectTimeout(10000);
   huc.connect();

   long endTime = DateProvider.getCurrentTimeMillis();
   long processingTime = (endTime - startTime);
   value = Long.toString(processingTime);

catch (IOException ioe)
  {
  processFailure("Could not establish connection. Error is: '" + ioe.getLocalizedMessage() + "'.");
   }

What can I do to bypass the cert not being found code-wise?

Edit: I have looked at the solutions provided in the other thread. Implementation a TrustManager can open up to MITM attacks. But since I am only pinging the server, would that really affect me at all?