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I'm trying to access The Guardian's website, and I get errors with both Safari and Chrome.

In Safari:

Safari Can't Open the Page

Safari can't open the page "https://www.theguardian.com" because Safari can't establish a secure connection to the server "www.theguardian.com".

In Chrome:

Your connection is not private

Attackers might be trying to steal your information from theguardian.com (for example, passwords, messages or credit cards). NET::ERR_CERT_REVOKED

EDIT: The problem appears to have morphed somewhat in Safari, and I've found the same issue with Kinja. Now, instead of it refusing to load the page, it loads a page that looks like this:

enter image description here

Both sites appear to have certificates issued by GlobalSign Organization Validation CA, and both have the error "This certificate has an invalid issuer".

When I use Safari on my wife's user account or use Firefox on my own account, the website loads fine. How can I fix my browsers on my user account such that they also successfully load the website?

So far, I've unsuccessfully tried:

  • In Safari, going to Preferences > Privacy, clicking 'Manage Website Data…' and deleting everything.
  • Going into Keychain Access and resetting my login keychain to the default.
  • Deleting the Safari-relevant folders in ~/Caches.

Neither fixes the problem, but the problem is not present on other user accounts, so I don't think it can be a system-level issue.

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  • Clear the caches/cookies from Chome and Safari? Commented Jan 12, 2017 at 15:40
  • No, I tried that – doesn't seem to work.
    – John Coxon
    Commented Jan 12, 2017 at 18:13

2 Answers 2

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So, after an evening of poking at the situation and trying to work out what's going on, I eventually worked it out.

As it transpires, there was an issue with the CRL and OCSP caches on my account on my iMac – other users did not have the same problem as a result. These caches are not deleted by deleting anything from ~/Caches, which is why the issue didn't resolve when I tried that.

The answer came from the Apple Developer Forums, who pointed me to a page on the GlobalSign website. The solution is to open Command Prompt/Terminal and enter one of the following commands, then reboot.

Windows

certutil -urlcache * delete

OS X (pre-Sierra)

sudo rm /var/db/crls/*cache.db

 macOS Sierra

sqlite3 ~/Library/Keychains/*/ocspcache.sqlite3 'DELETE FROM ocsp;'
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Typing thisisunsafe (not in the address bar, but just on the page) whitelists the url/cert.

I'm using this workaround on sites I know to be legit (server cluster nodes with names that are different than the VIP they serve.) Use with caution - there is a reason why Chrome treats self-signed certs with suspicion.

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