Internet Explorer certificate warningSolved

We have a customer who is trying to start a trial over the Internet on a Windows PC. He has administrator access and his network requires a proxy server.

Internet Explorer is configured to use the proxy. He can browse https://wyday.com but he gets a "There is a problem with this website's security certificate" warning. He is able to click "Continue to this wesite (not recommended)" and open the Wyday home page.

When he tries to start a trial (our application calls UseTrial()) he gets a connection error. Could the certificate warning and UseTrial() failure be related? Do you have any suggestions for troubleshooting or working around this?

Thanks,Carol

Hey Carol.

1 of 2 things is happening:

1. The customer is running on a non-updated version of Windows. Make sure they update Windows to get the latest security patches and "Certificate Authority" list (in basic terms it's the list of trusted SSL "signers").

2. The proxy the user is connecting to is attempting to modify the response from wyday.com. If that's their company policy, then it is what it is, but that's a pretty short-sighted company policy. Also, if it's the company policy then they should also correctly install the "man-in-the-middle" certificates they're using when they're intercepting content from wyday.com.

Let me know if that helps. In either case a system-admin with expertise will have to fix the problem. Or tell the customer to bypass the proxy, because the proxy is filtering, modifying, and tracking their web usage. Again, if it's their company policy, then it is what it is, but the end-user should be aware of it.

Thanks for the explanation, Sam.

It turned out to be issue 2. The customer analyzed the certificate chain in IE and instead of displaying the Comodo / wyday certificates, it showed a certificate from the customer's organization. It looks like the proxy server is replacing(?) the certificate.

Rather than fight the IT department over this, we'll have the customer do an offline activation.

Thanks

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