Locked out of site cannot fix - help?

[stagbadger]

Hi

Can anyone help me solve this issue? Sadly I am not sure which way to go with this. Suddenly a site I use every day for work cannot be accessed (see screen grabs) I think it is to do with an Avast certificate. I am using Google Chrome

Cheers Glen

 

[Arctic Moose]

It looks like Avast is man-in-the-middle attacking you by decrypting you traffic and then reencrypting with its own certificates. Perhaps ”legitimately” to inspect your SSL traffic for malware? If this is the case, I’d immediately uninstall Avast, sounds super shady.

If you still want this, try uninstalling Avast, reboot and check if the website works and then reinstall Avast.

 

[stagbadger]

Hi

Thanks for getting back to me, uninstalled Avast and now getting the attached. Also now getting locked out of other sites?

Best Regards
Glen

 

[Fishrrman]

Might be time to consider obtaining a Mac that runs software considerably "newer than" El Capitan...
(you never told us what Mac you have and what year it was made)

 

[stagbadger]

Might be time to consider obtaining a Mac that runs software considerably "newer than" El Capitan...
(you never told us what Mac you have and what year it was made)

I think you are totally correct, I've definitely had my money's worth out of a 13 year year old mac! Lol

Cheers Glen

 

[laptech]

Apparently there is an issue with Google and Entrust. The chrome browser will no longer 'trust' certificates by Entrust. Google says certificates that have not expired should still work. They say 'should', they do not say they 'will' work though.

Google will no longer trust Entrust certificates from October 2024 - Red Sift Blog

On Thursday 27th June 2024, Google announced that it had been “closely following the discussions in the MDSP community regarding Entrust’s compliance failures.

blog.redsift.com

So basically, Royal mail needs to stop using Entrust certificates and use someone else for it's certificates.

 

[chrfr]

I think you are totally correct, I've definitely had my money's worth out of a 13 year year old mac! Lol

Cheers Glen

Your Mac mini can run macOS Catalina, version 10.15.7. It's still nearly 6 years out of date but that's at least better than the 9 year old operating system you're using now. You can upgrade it by downloading the Catalina installer from here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/macos-catalina/id1466841314?mt=12

A better option would be to buy a newer Mac mini, though. The current version can be purchased quite inexpensively.

 

[okkibs]

It looks like your old OS does not have the locally installed root certificates up to date. This will cause issues like this and the solution is to use a browser that uses its own certificate store so it doesn't have to rely on the OS to keep the certificates updated. Such a browser is Firefox. Unfortunately even that one no longer works on your OS. You need to upgrade from 10.11 to at least 10.12 (Sierra) which is supported by Firefox ESR 115 that you can download here: https://www.firefox.com/en-US/download/all/desktop-esr/osx/en-US/

But the overall much better solution would be to get the cheapest M4 Mini on sale for 500 bucks and you'll be set for the next 13 years again. Software eventually becomes so out of date that even that M4 Mini will start showing almost identical browsing issues eventually, there's no way around it even if performance is still alright.

There is some hope that Apple will support its own chips longer than the kind of Intel chip that's in your Mac Mini but even then there's no guarantees if stuff will still be compatible 13 years in the future. There are Windows computers that last longer but obviously if you wanted to use Windows you wouldn't have a Mac.

In any case, the latest M4 Macs give you the best chance to get as much life out of a new Mac as possible.

So basically, Royal mail needs to stop using Entrust certificates and use someone else for it's certificates.

No issues here with any browser including chromium based ones on the latest macOS. Google Chrome in particular I don't test as I refuse to (re-) install Chrome as Google's been driving its Chrome browser customers away when they intentionally modified their browser to disable adblockers and other useful addons. At this point I would no longer put any trust in that browser.