Are any other Mac users having issues performing OS updates on Virgin Media?
 

Even if not it would be useful if you could share your output from the command

If you're affected by the problem it will say something like:

I am aware of a growing number of users across the country who are having this problem that prevents macOS updates from working, but I'm having a nightmare trying to get through to somebody useful at Virgin Media who can look in to this. I really don't have time to be going through steps like rebooting my computer and my SuperHub when I know it's not isolated to me. I've asked a number of Mac users to test this and so far every Virgin customer has the problem, and no customer of other ISPs has the problem.

Re: Are any other Mac users having issues performing OS updates on Virgin Media?
 

That looks very much like a dns error, are you using VMs DNS servers ?

Re: Are any other Mac users having issues performing OS updates on Virgin Media?
 

I've ruled out DNS as I've tried all manner of DNS servers over the last 24 hours. As I say, it's affecting multiple customers. Most sources indicate this is a TLS error and sometimes even indicative of a MITM attack.

Error -1012 is kCFURLErrorUserCancelledAuthentication which can relate to an invalid certificate.

Given the above, my suspicion is that it could be something like VM's anti-piracy system gone haywire. That breaks TLS connections as it inspects the SNI header in a HTTP request and then tries to serve up their anti-piracy page if it's a blocked site (obviously VM's server can't serve up a valid TLS certificate for the domain). Essentially, they perform a MITM attack.

We can expect Apple's software update process to be good enough to abort if it detects an invalid TLS certificate, which is what seems to be happening. But Apple's TLS certificate is valid, because other users on other ISPs aren't affected.

Also I should add that an affected Mac that could not perform updates while connected to Virgin Media was able to successfully do so when tethered to an EE connection, so this rules out anything specific to the computers.

---------- Post added at 16:00 ---------- Previous post was at 14:21 ----------

Seems to be resolved now. What a massive waste of time this has been, and Virgin's support has been spectacularly awful.

Re: Are any other Mac users having issues performing OS updates on Virgin Media?
 

They are not technical, at all, so yes, this would have been way beyond them.

Re: Are any other Mac users having issues performing OS updates on Virgin Media?
 

That error has existed since at least MacOS 10.8.1 and possibly earlier, nothing to do with VM it's the way the OS handles network preferences.

Re: Are any other Mac users having issues performing OS updates on Virgin Media?
 

It's a TLS error and in 15 years of using macOS I've never encountered it. I found people across the country who were having the same error, at the exact same time, only on Virgin Media, and who had it start working again at the exact same time.

An affected machine was able to update fine over EE while this was going on, so it wasn't a problem with the computer.

Re: Are any other Mac users having issues performing OS updates on Virgin Media?
 

I’d suggest you look on the official Apple forums as I said this has existed since 10.8.1

I can ask one of my staff who’s my head of Apple engineering to give you a more detailed breakdown on the issue if you would like ?

Re: Are any other Mac users having issues performing OS updates on Virgin Media?
 

I suggest you look at Apple's documentation as this was introduced in macOS 10.2 long before 10.8.1: https://developer.apple.com/document...urlerrordomain

It's just an error condition that describes a particular problem, but you are suggesting it's some kind of inherent bug, but it's not, it's a descriptive message when something goes wrong. It doesn't mean the problem is macOS. The problem was Virgin Media.

Please do ask your engineer to provide a detailed breakdown that explains why a generic error message that can have multiple explanations, incuding issues on the wider Internet, could possibly be an issue only related to a problem with macOS itself, yet somehow only affected macOS users on Virgin Media for a 36 hour time period, and how if it is a probme with macOS itself an affected machine was not experiencing the issue connected to EE yet was experiencing the issue on Virgin Media, and how any of this is to do with network preferences (note the documentation doesn't mention network preferences at all) when it was affecting me with a brand new Mac trying to do its first update and install Rosetta 2, and another customer I found who was trying to perform Internet Recovery to reinstall macOS on their machine. Neither of these machines had any network preferences that were not default.

Also it would be nice to understand how a network preference issue affected all our remote workers on Virgin Media at the exact same time, and none of our office workers on AAISP, and how it stopped affecting Virgin Media users at the exact same time despite nobody changing any network settings.

If you bothered to read anything I wrote you'd know I looked quite deeply in to this and the error in this case did seem to relate to an inability to create a TLS connection with Apple's updates servers. Again, we know Apple's certificate was valid as it worked for other ISPs. We also know Virgin Media have the technology active on their network that can break TLS connections, just go to the https version of any piracy site that's blocked and if you have a decent browser it will just show an SSL error because it rightfully refuses to load Virgin's modified content. We know this issue only affected Virgin Media users. So what's your logic for concluding this was not a VM issue?

Also I did look on the Apple forums, and as I said above, this error message can have multiple explanations, but almost always some kind of TLS issue. The most common issue I found was that the system clock was wrong, and an accurate time is needed for establishing a TLS connection. All of the Macs concerned had an accurate time set.

I'm an engineer too. I'm not stupid. I spent hours going through every possible cause. The most likely explanation is: Virgin Media. And it doesn't seem to be a coincidence that a few hours after support agreed to escalate my issue to their network team that it was fixed.

In summary, I don't think this was a bug in macOS. I think this was macOS doing its job and refusing to connect to an untrusted source.

Re: Are any other Mac users having issues performing OS updates on Virgin Media?
 

I have just tried it at my end as I use a Mac and it's working fine over my connection. could be the an issue on Virgin's Network in your area blocking it.

Re: Are any other Mac users having issues performing OS updates on Virgin Media?
 

Thanks for testing, it's all been resolved