VeriSign is treated as an unknown authority

I've been getting the following error every time I connect to my IMAP account using Mail.app for the past 5 months or so.

"There is no root certificate for this server",

and in the certificate it says

"Issued by: VeriSign Trust Network"

and

"This certificate was signed by an unknown authority".

I can click on "Continue" and then everything works fine - it is just annoying that I have to do this. How can I fix this? Is this a configuration problem at my end, the server end, or possibly a bug in Mail.app?

Michal.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on Apr 22, 2006 7:03 AM

Reply
11 replies

Apr 22, 2006 9:38 AM in response to Sijmons

In the keychain "login" I don't have any certificates. In the keychain "X509Anchors", there are many certificates, and the closest things to anything I saw in the error are:

"VeriSign Class 1 Public Primary Certification Authority" (up to Class 4).

I can't find anything that seems to refer to the server that I am connecting to.

I'm not sure why I should be deleting anything. Could you explain (or point me in the direction of an explanation)? If there is a lack of a certificate, then why will deleting a certificate help?

Michal

Apr 22, 2006 9:56 AM in response to MichalC

Yes, you may be careful there, but you might play around with a few settings that are listed at the end of the text, which I copied from the Keychain Access help file.

But these certificates came there while making internet connections, so deleting one should initiate a new certificate next time you access that place. Tricky thing remains, which one is causing your problem.

quote:
Certificates have many uses. For example, a certificate might allow you to sign email, encrypt a document, connect to a secure network, or identify yourself on iChat. Each type of usage is governed by a trust policy, which determines whether a certificate is valid for that use. A certificate may be valid for some uses but not for others.

Mac OS X uses a number of built-in policies to determine whether a certificate is trusted:


X.509 Basic Policy: The certificate must be part of a valid chain whose root is in the trusted X509Anchors file.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL): The name in a server's certificate must match its DNS host name to successfully establish a connection. The host name check is not performed for SSL client certificates. If there is an extended key usage field, it must contain an appropriate value.

Secure Mail (S/MIME): When signing or encrypting, the user's email address must be listed in the certificate, and certain key usage fields must be present.

Extensible Authentication (EAP): When connecting to a network that requires 802.1X authentication, the name in the server's certificate must match its DNS host name. The host name check is not performed for client certificates. If an extended key usage field is present, it must contain an appropriate value.

Code Signing: The certificate must contain key usage settings that explicitly permit it to sign code.

IP Security (IPsec): When certificates are used to secure IP traffic (for example, in establishing a VPN connection), the name in the server's certificate must match its DNS host name. The host name check is not performed for client certificates. If an extended key usage field is present, it must contain an appropriate value.

iChat Security: The certificate must contain key usage settings that allow it to be used for iChat.
You can change these policies on each certificate, providing a greater amount of control over how certificates are evaluated.


To view or change a certificate's trust settings:
Open Keychain Access.
Select a certificate, then click Info ℹ or double-click the certificate in the list.
Click the Trust Settings disclosure triangle to display the available trust policies for that certificate.
To override the policy, select a new trust setting from the pop-up menu.

Apr 22, 2006 11:26 AM in response to Sijmons

The only certificates I have anywhere in any keychains are "root" certificates. As I understood it, the the IMAP server I am connecting to sends me its certificate, which is signed by some trusted authority, such as VeriSign, and then my computer compares it with the root certificate for VeriSign, to make sure it's authentic.

So just to confirm - deleteting a root certificate will not cause any harm?

Apr 22, 2006 12:29 PM in response to MichalC

you're close, but it works also that in a next visit, you can be trusted because you have the proper certificate.
I could test it myself but I can't see either to which site this certificate links to and I have no problem that can be solved this way so I won't know if it helped.
But the point it, it was'nt there in the beginning (on a fresh Mac) so you should be able to get a new one if it is deleted. Some are time-limited and expire anyway (which was your initial problem), so my guess it you can do it w/o harm, but no guarantees here Michael, just jump in on the deep end...

Let me know if it helped, because I could find nothing on these forums that describe this issue.

Apr 22, 2006 1:21 PM in response to MichalC

Now, I have tried connecting to my mail server in Outlook Express on Windows XP running on a VirtualPC on my mac. I get the following error:

****
The server you are connecting to is using a security certificate that could not be verified.

A required certificate is not within its validity period when verifying against the current system clock or the timestamp in the signed file
****

I have checked my date/time (both in Mac and on the VirtualPC). Looking at the certificate as seen in Mail.app, it starts in August 2005 and expires in August 2006. Looking at the VeriSign root certificates in Keychain - they are valid from 1999 and expire in 2036.

Not sure what this all means though.

Michal.

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VeriSign is treated as an unknown authority

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