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Technical explanation for "Secure Connection Failed"

pradyumna
pradyumna
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I own a few web applications. When a user says they're seeing a "Secure Connection Failed" message, the error message is worded in a nice way that a non-technical audience can easily understand and get a feel of what may be going on.

But, for me to fix the problem, I need more details, regarding what exactly, on a technical level, is Firefox trying to convey?

Is there a configuration setting or something that I can enable to make it print out the "technical garbage" that can de-humanize the message?

For example, instead of saying "The page cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.", could it say something straight, specific and un-ambiguous, maybe "CN mismatch. Tried connecting to abc.foo.com. Was presented a certificate issued to xyz.bar.com. Won't connect."

Thank you.

I own a few web applications. When a user says they're seeing a "Secure Connection Failed" message, the error message is worded in a nice way that a non-technical audience can easily understand and get a feel of what may be going on. But, for me to fix the problem, I need more details, regarding what exactly, on a technical level, is Firefox trying to convey? Is there a configuration setting or something that I can enable to make it print out the "technical garbage" that can de-humanize the message? For example, instead of saying "The page cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.", could it say something straight, specific and un-ambiguous, maybe "CN mismatch. Tried connecting to abc.foo.com. Was presented a certificate issued to xyz.bar.com. Won't connect." Thank you.

All Replies (1)

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 10 Contributor
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If you use a test site such as the following, does it show a complete certificate chain, avoidance of Logjam problems, no RC4 ciphers, and preferably TLS 1.2 support?

https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

If so, the most common problem is likely to be client side, for example, with security software that filter HTTPS traffic using a man-in-the-middle strategy (e.g., Avast, Bitdefender, ESET, Kaspersky). I don't know whether you can test anything like that on Linux to see how it looks for yourself.

If you need testers, you can post a link here.