Current Events > In IT, it feels good when you figure out the root of a strange problem...

(+) Yeah! (+)

In front of a group.

*User sitting in another company's office with one of our company laptops*
*One of our IT guys is remoted into the laptop trying to figure out why that company laptop is getting certificate errors on HTTPS web sites*
*Group of IT folks standing around that IT guy's desk trying to figure it out*
*I walk over, try a few things, sit back, theorize, figured out the problem*
*I walk away like a badass*


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What was the problem?
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Oh. I thought this was about Stephen King

Incorrect date/time?
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Zikten posted...

Oh. I thought this was about Stephen King

For some reason, I did too
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Zikten posted...

Oh. I thought this was about Stephen King

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That's pretty much my job but expanded beyond IT issues. Personally, I think it sucks because I'm expected to get it right on the spot even though I never even seen some of these problems before.

So fix is ok you did your job.
Can't fix means I suck.
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meestermj posted...

What was the problem?

The company likely has a physical or virtual web sense proxy on their internal network (why that company is allowing her to connect to their internal network with a foreign machine is a whole different problem). The web sense proxy is forcing all HTTPS traffic to use that company's root certificate, but our company laptop doesn't trust that certificate. So, she gets certificate errors on all HTTPS sites and some HTTPS sites don't load properly at all.

I connected to our company VPN and was able to hit internal HTTPS sites just fine.

Their web sense proxy wouldn't be determine that our internal sites are coming across on HTTPS (TCP 443) because the VPN tunnel encrypts the traffic, and it's only decrypted once it actually hits the user's machine.
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Sooo what was the issue? The story sounds like youre exagerating quite a bit bro

You prolly reset IE or added an exception
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HydroCannabinol posted...

Sooo what was the issue? The story sounds like youre exagerating quite a bit bro

You prolly reset IE or added an exception

Nope.

CableZL posted...

meestermj posted...

What was the problem?

The company likely has a physical or virtual web sense proxy on their internal network (why that company is allowing her to connect to their internal network with a foreign machine is a whole different problem). The web sense proxy is forcing all HTTPS traffic to use that company's root certificate, but our company laptop doesn't trust that certificate. So, she gets certificate errors on all HTTPS sites and some HTTPS sites don't load properly at all.

I connected to our company VPN and was able to hit internal HTTPS sites just fine.

Their web sense proxy wouldn't be determine that our internal sites are coming across on HTTPS (TCP 443) because the VPN tunnel encrypts the traffic, and it's only decrypted once it actually hits the user's machine.

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SpiralDrift posted...

Incorrect date/time?

That was my first hunch. In my experience, that's the most common issue when people can't properly access HTTPS sites.
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You should know by now we call that joy. All the no joy building up to that sweet sweet joy is indeed a wonderful feeling.
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fenderbender321 posted...

Sometimes I feel like I should work in IT....

I'll call my companies IT department and describe the problem, and then I'll give them my theory, but they never listen to it and instead just follow their normal routine of troubleshooting. Then at the end, it turns out my theory was right.

I'm good at reasoning with computers. If this does that when this is going on, then _____ happens. That kind of thinking.

But I have no background in it or education.

If you have a good technical acumen (sounds like you do), then you should definitely give it a shot. I just wouldn't recommend staying in the entry level realm too long like I did. I did tech support for 5.5 years total before actually moving into a NOC environment. Even then it was another 6 months before I started getting certs.
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I normally just do a Windows update, browser update, check our software filtering.
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You should have tried turning it off and then on again.
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