General Question

LostInParadise's avatar

Why would our program suddenly get password certification errors and then later stop getting them?

Asked by LostInParadise (31907points) August 28th, 2015

I work as a programmer, but I have only sketchy knowledge of what goes on with the communication functions. To me they are just black boxes that send data provided everything is okay. We were required to get password certification through a company called DataPower, which is affiliated with IBM.

Our program ordinarily works fine, but yesterday, in the process of calling a client’s Web service functions, we were getting socket errors. Our LAN team looked into the data streams back and forth and found that the specific error was rejection of password certification. Nobody had a clue as to what the cause was, but in the process of periodically restarting the program to see what was going on, the errors eventually stopped and the program is now running.

Any computer experts here have any idea of what might have been going on?

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5 Answers

Zaku's avatar

I don’t have specific knowledge, but certifications generally implies checking a cert database and/or server to check certs, and a rejection could mean that the cert status actually changed, or that there was a communication problem or bug with the cert server/service for a while.

Tropical_Willie's avatar

I’m not a IT geek but I started programming with a soldering iron on an IBM accounting machine about fifty years ago. There maybe a case the server or servers change their address or “instance”.

elbanditoroso's avatar

Could the client’s web server’s HTTPS certificate (see link for explanation) have expired that morning? But by the time you were finished testing, they might have renewed their certificate?

This sort of thing happens all the time – I remember not too many years ago, some major bank (I think it was Bank of America) let their SSL certificate expire, and their customers freaked out until BoA renewed the credential.

LostInParadise's avatar

Good suggestion, but we were using our own certification. Our client tested their software and said everything was working fine.

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