Banned RSA SecurID certificate causing issues for Mac enterprise users

By Mike Peterson

Mac

users across the globe are reportedly having trouble logging into their enterprise virtual private networks because of an apparent certificate issue, user reports suggest.

Credit: RSA

Specifically, enterprise VPNs that rely on the RSA SecurID mechanism for multi-factor authentication are seeing the problem, according to a forum post on the RSA website. Multiple posters are reporting that RSA SecurID version 4.2.1 is failing to launch as of Tuesday morning.

Users are being hit with an error dialog box that says there's a "trust evaluate failure."

It isn't clear what the exact problem is, but multiple forum users and system administrators suggest that Apple has blocked the RSA security certificate. One poster says that the problem is affecting all macOS users in their company that use RSA SecurID.

Some of the administrators tried workarounds, like uninstalling and reinstalling the MFA mechanism. However, it appears that the only fix is Apple removing the certificate from its blocklist or RSA issuing a new version with a different certificate.

Since the issue is tied to a security certificate, it doesn't appear to matter what version of macOS a user is running. It appears that the problem is present on versions ranging from macOS Catalina to macOS Big Sur.

RSA SecurID is a mechanism meant to perform two-factor authentication or MFA for enterprise VPN systems.

AppleInsider has reached out to Apple about the certificate blocking.

Update: RSA has confirmed that it is aware of the issue and says that its SecurID team is currently investigating the problem with Apple.