GlobalSign certificate is not trusted when I try to access forums.macrumors.com

[bzgnyc2]

Hello,

When I access forums.macrumors.com from Safari [Version 15.6.1 (15613.3.9.1.16, 15613)] on a Mac still running Catalina and I get a SSL certificate error. This started after MacRumors refreshed the related SSL certificate on Feb 4. The odd thing is that Safari says the "GlobalSign" certificate is not trusted which seems weird.

I can reboot this system under Monterey or just use Firefox when I am testing something under Catalina but I was just surprised. Is this version of Safari just going to slowly not work across the web soon?

Or is there something I can do to keep it working? I am afraid I never kept up with web technologies after straight HTML and don't really know how all these https/SSL technologies work under the hood.

View attachment 2346334

 

[bzgnyc2]

I noticed this was moved to Site and Forum Feedback though I am not sure this is a site issue.

I did some research and it seems that the new certificate for forums.macrumors.com requires that I have the GlobalSign R6 root certificate loaded in my Keychain. I had to force the system to trust this certificate after I installed it, but then the site worked without error. On the other hand, Monterey (at least v.12.7.3) comes pre-installed with this certificate.

However, now I would like to better understand my responsibilities for certificate management as well as proper usage of Keychain for things like this. I've never had to manually mange my certificates before. However, when I go to sites like GlobalSign or DigiCert I notice that they have multiple test sites that I can't access securely unless I install yet more certificates. However, some are immediately trusted upon installation while others require that I force trust. This may be better moved back to the Mac Apps forums.