"The certificate chain was issued by an authority that is not trusted" when connecting DB in VM Role from Azure website

Question

"The certificate chain was issued by an authority that is not trusted" when connecting DB in VM Role from Azure website

I am experiencing error when connecting MY DB which is in VM Role(I have SQL VM Role) from Azure Website. Both VM Role and Azure Website are in West zone. I am facing following issue:

SqlException (0x80131904): A connection was successfully established with the server, but then an error occurred during the login process. (provider: SSL Provider, error: 0 - The certificate chain was issued by an authority that is not trusted.)]

I am able to connect to my DB using SSMS. 1433 port is open on my VM role. What is wrong with my connection?

azure-web-roles

azure-vm-role

asked on Stack Overflow Jul 12, 2013 by

ZafarYousafi • edited Nov 25, 2018 by

Andrea

8 Answers

You likely don't have a CA signed certificate installed in your SQL VM's trusted root store.

If you have Encrypt=True in the connection string, either set that to off (not recommended), or add the following in the connection string:

TrustServerCertificate=True

SQL Server will create a self-signed certificate if you don't install one for it to use, but it won't be trusted by the caller since it's not CA-signed, unless you tell the connection string to trust any server cert by default.

Long term, I'd recommend leveraging Let's Encrypt to get a CA signed certificate from a known trusted CA for free, and install it on the VM. Don't forget to set it up to automatically refresh. You can read more on this topic in SQL Server books online under the topic of "Encryption Hierarchy", and "Using Encryption Without Validation".

answered on Stack Overflow Jul 15, 2013 by

Thiago Silva • edited Jul 15, 2019 by

Dale K

If you're using SQL Management Studio, please goto connection properties and click on "Trust server certificated"

answered on Stack Overflow May 24, 2018 by

ct.tan

If you're seeing this error message when attempting to connect using SSMS, add TrustServerCertificate=True to the Additional Connection Parameters.

answered on Stack Overflow May 1, 2017 by

vmanne • edited Jul 15, 2019 by

Dale K

If You are trying to access it through Data Connections in Visual Studio 2015, and getting the above Error, Then Go to Advanced and set TrustServerCertificate=True for error to go away.

answered on Stack Overflow Aug 10, 2016 by

Bhavjot

Got hit by the same issue while accessing SQLServer from IIS. Adding TrustServerCertificate=True didnot help.

Could see a comment in MS docs: Make sure the SQLServer service account has access to the TLS Certificate you are using. (NT Service\MSSQLSERVER)

Open personal store and right click on the certificate -> manage private keys -> Add the SQL service account and give full control.

Restart the SQL service. It worked.

answered on Stack Overflow Jun 17, 2020 by

Kaavya T

I ran into this error trying to run the profiler, even though my connection had Trust server certificate checked and I added TrustServerCertificate=True in the Advanced Section. I changed to an instance of SSMS running as administrator and the profiler started with no problem. (I previously had found that when my connections even to local took a long time to connect, running as administrator helped).

answered on Stack Overflow Jun 28, 2018 by

Bill • edited Jul 15, 2019 by

Dale K

I got this Issue while importing Excel data into SQLDatabase through SSMS. The solution is to set TrustServerCertificate = True in the security section

answered on Stack Overflow Dec 9, 2018 by

Kanna Reddy • edited Jul 15, 2019 by

Dale K

The same can be achieved from ssms client itself. Just open the ssms, insert the server name and then from options under heading connection properties make sure Trust server certificate is checked.

answered on Stack Overflow May 10, 2018 by

Manas • edited May 10, 2018 by

Zoe

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