Invalid SSL Certificate

What it means

The site responded on HTTPS, but the certificate it presented could not be read at all — it came back empty or unusable rather than as a valid, parseable certificate.

Why it matters

TLS depends on the server presenting a certificate the client can actually parse and verify. When nothing usable comes back, browsers and API clients cannot establish any trust in the connection, and most will refuse to complete the handshake at all — visitors see a hard connection failure rather than a page.

What Nivaronix checks

Nivaronix opens a TLS connection and requests the certificate the server presents during the handshake. If the handshake completes but no certificate data can be read back, this finding is raised. This is a certificate-readability check, not a scan for server-side vulnerabilities.

Example evidence

Illustrative example, not a live scan result. Run the checker below to see your own domain's actual status.

Illustrative example only — not a live scan result.

URL: https://example.com
TLS handshake: completed
Certificate returned: none / unreadable
Status: INVALID CERTIFICATE

How to fix it

• Install a valid SSL certificate on the server handling this domain — check that the certificate file, private key, and any intermediate bundle are all correctly referenced in the web server or load balancer configuration.
• If the certificate was recently issued or renewed, confirm it was actually deployed and the server was reloaded, not just downloaded.
• Use a managed TLS option (Let's Encrypt via certbot/ACME, or your CDN's managed certificate feature) to reduce the chance of a misconfigured manual install.

How to verify the fix

Re-run the SSL/TLS checker against the domain, or run `openssl s_client -connect hostname:443 -servername hostname` from a terminal and confirm a certificate is returned and readable.