Security Certificate Errors: Causes and Solutions

Common Causes of Security Certificate Errors

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Question

Joe, a user, is having issues when trying to access certain web pages.

Upon navigating to a web page, it seems like it connects, but then presents the following message: The security certificate presented by this website was not trusted by a trusted certificate authority.

Joe has cleared his cache and cookies, rebooted his machine, and attempted to browse to the website from a coworker's desktop, but it still presented with this error.

Which of the following is the MOST likely cause of this error?

A.

The web server is missing an intermediate certificate. B.

The website is missing an HTTPS certificate. C.

TLS is not enabled in the browser. D.

The SSL certificate has expired.

A.

Explanations

Joe, a user, is having issues when trying to access certain web pages.

Upon navigating to a web page, it seems like it connects, but then presents the following message: The security certificate presented by this website was not trusted by a trusted certificate authority.

Joe has cleared his cache and cookies, rebooted his machine, and attempted to browse to the website from a coworker's desktop, but it still presented with this error.

Which of the following is the MOST likely cause of this error?

A.

The web server is missing an intermediate certificate.

B.

The website is missing an HTTPS certificate.

C.

TLS is not enabled in the browser.

D.

The SSL certificate has expired.

A.

The most likely cause of this error is that the web server is missing an intermediate certificate.

When a website is secured with an SSL/TLS certificate, the server presents a digital certificate to the user's web browser. This certificate is issued by a trusted Certificate Authority (CA) and is used to verify the website's identity and establish a secure connection.

However, in some cases, the certificate presented by the web server may not be directly issued by a trusted CA. Instead, it may be issued by an intermediate CA, which is a subordinate CA that has been issued a certificate by a trusted root CA. The intermediate CA is used to issue certificates for websites, which are then trusted by the root CA.

If the intermediate certificate is missing or not installed properly on the web server, the user's browser will not be able to verify the website's identity and will display an error message stating that the certificate was not trusted by a trusted CA.

In this scenario, Joe has already tried clearing his cache and cookies, rebooting his machine, and attempting to browse the website from a coworker's desktop, but he still encounters the same error. This suggests that the issue is not with his local machine or network settings, but rather with the website's SSL/TLS certificate configuration.

The other answer choices are less likely to be the cause of the error in this scenario. The website is unlikely to be missing an HTTPS certificate as HTTPS is a protocol that is used to encrypt data sent between the user's browser and the web server, and is not directly related to SSL/TLS certificate verification. Similarly, TLS is not directly related to SSL/TLS certificate verification and is more likely to cause issues with establishing a secure connection rather than verifying the server's identity. Finally, if the SSL certificate had expired, the browser would display a different error message stating that the certificate has expired, rather than that it was not trusted by a trusted CA.