When checking for Apple software updates today, my colleague Tim Sutton noticed that there was a problem with checking updates. When I checked for updates on my 10.8.x and 10.9.x Macs using the App Store and the command-line softwareupdate tool, I received the same error from both:
The operation couldn’t be completed. (NSURLErrorDomain error -1012.)
The reason for the error has its root in a change which Apple introduced with OS X 10.8.x, where Macs running 10.8.x and 10.9.x use an HTTPS URL to check for updates on Apple’s Software Update servers. It appears that the SSL certificate used to validate Apple’s Software Update service has expired as of Saturday, May 24th at 7:59:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time.
Since the certificate needs to be valid in order for connections to Apple’s Software Update servers to work properly, the certificate expiration is preventing the Software Update service from connecting.
When I checked for software updates on Macs running 10.7.5 and 10.6.8, they were unaffected by this issue. Macs running 10.7.x and older use an HTTP URL to connect to Apple’s Software Update servers, which means they do not use an SSL certificate to validate the connection.
Hopefully, Apple is able to get a new certificate in place soon. Once a valid certificate is in place, Apple’s Software Update service should begin working again for Macs running 10.8.x and higher.
Update: May 25th, 2014 – It appears that Apple has acted with dispatch to fix this issue. A new SSL certificate is now in place, with an expiration date of Tuesday, May 24, 2016 at 7:59:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time.
