Untrusted Root Certificate

[BarbaricSoul]

Having some issues with my Dad's laptop. Whenever he tries to go to his bank's website on his laptop, he get's a unsecured connection because of a untrusted root certificate. It's a old Win7 home dual core laptop, but it is capable to doing what my Dad needs it for. Any help in dealing with this issue would be appreciated. I know it's a out dated laptop, but I would really prefer to fix this than replace the laptop.

 

[ThaiTaffy]

From my own experience with authentication although very different to this case, the easiest way I deal with it is to delete the local certificate then when you log in to whatever you should be issued a new one.
(making backups of the original of course if everything goes Pete tong)

"IT support = switch it off and on"

 

[BarbaricSoul]

When I try to view the cert, I get a message saying I need to install the cert in the trusted root cert store. How do I do that?

 

[Nike_486DX]

are date/time set up correctly? and is the browser updated to the latest version? Starting with basic things as always

 

[BarbaricSoul]

are date/time set up correctly? and is the browser updated to the latest version? Starting with basic things as always

date and time is correctly set. Browser is a new DL/install of Chrome, less than 2 weeks old.

 

[qubit]

Whatever you do, DO NOT install that cert into the trusted root store. The browser should just recognize the cert like it does on TPU, otherwise there's something wrong with the website. The only time when you get that prompt is either when a website is compromised, or it's an internal server. In either case, the SSL cert won't have a root of trust going all the way back to a certificate authority such as Let's Encrypt, Sectigo etc.

Please post the exact URL that he goes to and we'll see if we get that problem here. It could well be a compromised site, although one wouldn't expect it to remain so for so long.

Also, does W7 have all the latest patches installed? I know Microsoft don't issue any more, but it should still have up to the latest patches.

 

[BarbaricSoul]

Whatever you do, DO NOT install that cert into the trusted root store. The browser should just recognize the cert like it does on TPU, otherwise there's something wrong with the website. The only time when you get that prompt is either when a website is compromised, or it's an internal server. In either case, the SSL cert won't have a root of trust going all the way back to a certificate authority such as Let's Encrypt, Sectigo etc.

Please post the exact URL that he goes to and we'll see if we get that problem here. It could well be a compromised site, although one wouldn't expect it to remain so for so long.

Also, does W7 have all the latest patches installed? I know Microsoft don't issue any more, but it should still have up to the latest patches.

The url is www.bankofamerica.com. No issues accessing the site with other computers/devices. Issues are only with this one laptop.

Ran windows update and got a 80072EFE error code

Also, the laptop has no issues with any other web site, just bank of america's site

 

[qubit]

The url is www.bankofamerica.com. No issues accessing the site with other computers/devices. Issues are only with this one laptop.

Ran windows update and got a 80072EFE error code

Also, the laptop has no issues with any other web site, just bank of america's site

Yup, no issues for me either accessing that.

Since Windows Update is broken, likely the only way to fix it is via a clean install. Since the guts of W7 are so out of date and also somewhat corrupted, this is the likely source of the problem. It's quite possible that W10 will work on it too and I'd recommend that over W7 anyday. Make an image backup of that HDD first, of course, so you can go back to how it was.

 

[BarbaricSoul]

really wanted to try to keep Win 7 as that's what my Dad is used to, and he not very computer literate. Ok, F--- it, Win 10 it is. Install in progress.

 

[thewan]

Until Chrome moves to their own root store, consider changing to Firefox if you want to keep on using windows 7 as firefox uses its own root store that comes as part of the firefox browser. On the other hand, currently Chrome based browsers use the Windows built in root store (if this has change please update us here). If you don't/can't keep Windows up to date, the certificates that ship with Windows can be invalidated/expire and therefore you will get an insecure connection with sites that use those. But with Firefox using its own root store instead of the one shipping with Windows, it is updated independently of Windows when you update Firefox. Google mentioned that Chrome will start to use its own one soon, but I'm not sure when will that happen.

 

[Nike_486DX]

The url is www.bankofamerica.com. No issues accessing the site with other computers/devices. Issues are only with this one laptop.

Ran windows update and got a 80072EFE error code

Also, the laptop has no issues with any other web site, just bank of america's site

interesting, i am running win7 and it connects just fine. And curiously enough, i dont have every update installed, just some 5-6 recent hotfixes. (Main advantage over the crappy 10/11 where u dont have freedom to choose + given a crappy tablet interface)

Probably its just a TLS related thingie? There was an update for Windows 7 and 8 way back in 2016

 

[BarbaricSoul]

well 10 is installed, everything is working as it should