Secure connection failed and Firefox did not connect
Revision Information
- Revision id: 162659
- Created:
- Creator: AliceWyman
- Comment: "Incorrect date settings" moved under Certificate warnings.
- Reviewed: Yes
- Reviewed:
- Reviewed by: AliceWyman
- Is approved? Yes
- Is current revision? No
- Ready for localization: Yes
- Readied for localization:
- Readied for localization by: AliceWyman
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Revision Content
If Firefox can't access a secure site (one that starts with https) you will see an error page with the heading Secure Connection Failed and a message about the error.
- If you see this heading without accessing a secure site, see Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems.
- If you see the error message Your connection is not secure, see the article What do the security warning codes mean?.
- For troubleshooting other error messages, see Websites don't load - troubleshoot and fix error messages.
Table of Contents
Secure connection cannot be established
When a website you visit attempts to secure communication between your computer and the website, Firefox cross-checks this attempt to ensure that the certificate and the method the website is using are actually secure.
Website issues
Some websites try using out-dated (no longer secure) TLS mechanisms in an attempt to secure your connection. Firefox protects you by preventing navigation to such sites if there is a problem in securely establishing a connection. When this happens, you will see an error page with the option to report the error to Mozilla.
If you experience this problem, contact the owners of the website and ask them to update their TLS version to a version that is still current and still secure.
Security software conflict
If you use an ESET security product such as NOD32 Antivirus or ESET Internet Security, turning off one of the following settings and then turning it back on may help eliminate the error.
- Enable application protocol content filtering
- Enable SSL/TLS protocol filtering
For detailed instructions, see this AskVG.com article. If you have questions or concerns about modifying these settings, please visit ESET support.
Avast users (and perhaps some others) are getting intermittent Secure Connection Failed errors with the SSL_ERROR_RX_RECORD_TOO_LONG
error code. These errors are intermittent and often clear up after a few reloads. One workaround could be to modify the Avast/AVG Web Shield settings to not scan secure connections.
Another workaround is to set Firefox not to try TLS 1.3:
- Type about:config in the address bar and press EnterReturn.
A warning page may appear. Click to go to the about:config page. - In the search box above the list, type or paste TLS and pause while the list is filtered
- Double-click the security.tls.version.max preference to display a dialog where you can modify the value from 4 to 3 (or, in other words, from TLS 1.3 to TLS 1.2) and then click OK.
There is at least one thread on the Avast forums about this issue: Reporting a minor bug with firefox, broken SSL connexions.
Certificate warnings
Firefox uses certificates on secure websites to ensure that your information is being sent to the intended recipient and can't be read by eavesdroppers. For a list of certificate warnings and error codes, see the article What do the security warning codes mean?.
Incorrect date settings
If the date is not correct on your system, this can cause Firefox to detect that the website's security certificate is expired or invalid. You should ensure that your system clock is set to today's date and time (double-click the clock icon on the Windows Taskbar). For information, see the article How to troubleshoot time related errors on secure websites.