Safari refuses SSL connection to one server

Question

I've got an intranet site setup which uses an SSL cert with a self-signed CA. On one of my Macs, Safari refuses to connect, with the "Safari can't open the page .. because Safari can't establish a secure connection to the server .." The Mac is running 10.11 (El Capitan) with the latest patch.

• Chrome and Firefox are both able to connect to that server.
• Safari is willing to connect to it if I use the IP address instead of the DNS name.
• In the logs I see com.apple.WebKit.Networking[3382]: NSURLSession/NSURLConnection HTTP load failed (kCFStreamErrorDomainSSL, -9802)
• Another Mac on the LAN is happy to connect to the machine by its DNS name

I suspect there's something wrong in the keychain, but I can't find any certs nor revocations for anything related to either the DNS name of the machine, or its CA.

Any suggestions how to debug this are very welcome. The other StackOverflow articles seem unrelated to my issue.

Answer 1

I recently ran into a similar issue with an iOS device on an intranet. I installed the self-signed root and issuing certificates on the phone, but continued to receive the message. After a lot of trial and error, I found that manually changing the DNS setting (tapping the 'i' icon next to the active wifi connection in the wifi settings) to Google's public DNS ("8.8.8.8") solved the problem.

Answer 2

My solution to this issue was to revert my Apache Configuration SSL Cipher Suite back to the default setting in WHM. Hopefully this may be of help.