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Secure connection failed in Firefox 17 only, but not firewall issue

Firefox Troubleshooting
AliceWyman replied
victorpac
victorpac

Firefox was working fine until I installed version 17, since when I have been unable to get on the net at all as I always get the message "secure connection failed". I have checked in Bitdefender firewall, which allows all versions of Frefox. I can use the dreaded Internet Explorer no problem. Any ideas? Windows 7 SP1

Firefox was working fine until I installed version 17, since when I have been unable to get on the net at all as I always get the message "secure connection failed". I have checked in Bitdefender firewall, which allows all versions of Frefox. I can use the dreaded Internet Explorer no problem. Any ideas? Windows 7 SP1

All Replies (6)

AliceWyman
AliceWyman
  • Moderator

P. S. I checked "More system details" and it shows: 

More Information

Message I get:
Secure Connection Failed
An error occurred during a connection to www.google.com.
Cannot communicate securely with peer: no common encryption algorithm(s).
(Error code: ssl_error_no_cypher_overlap)
The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
Please contact the web site owners to inform them of this problem.  Alternatively, use the command found in the help menu to report this broken site.

As mentioned in the Secure connection and security warning error pages in Firefox article, the "Secure Connection Failed" error is shown if Firefox can't access a secure site (one that starts with https:). If you are getting this error on nonsecure sites such as http://www.google.com then the problem could be an added extension. See Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems

Modified by AliceWyman

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor

Check the SSL settings:

  • Tools > Options > Advanced : Encryption: Protocols

You can check the ssl and tls prefs on the about:config page.

If any ssl or tls pref is bold (user set) then right-click that pref and choose "Reset" to reset the pref to the default value. Paste this regular expression in the Filter bar at the top of the about:config page:

  • /security.*ssl|security.*tls/

See also:

victorpac
victorpac Question owner

Thanks. I have now realised this happens with the google search engine but yahoo still works, as does bing. So it may not be a firefox issue after all.

AliceWyman
AliceWyman
  • Moderator

If you're having problems with Google's secure search from the Firefox about:home page or from https:///www.google.com what about when you search from http://www.google.com ?

For more information on issues with Google's SSL Search see: 

http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=173733
AliceWyman
AliceWyman
  • Moderator

P.S. If you're having problems with other secure (https:) websites, check your SSL and TLS settings in Firefox Options -> Advanced / Encryption and on the about:config page, like cor-el suggested.

Ref: Advanced panel - Accessibility, browsing, network, updates, and other advanced settings in Firefox (look under the Encryption tab section)

Modified by AliceWyman