What you’re seeing
- An error says the revocation function was unable to check revocation because the revocation server was offline (0x80092013).
- Smart card logons fail with a message about being unable to determine the certificate's revocation status.
- Certificate-based VPN or Wi-Fi authentication stops working for many users at once.
- Applications or browsers report they couldn't verify whether a certificate has been revoked.
Common causes
Every environment is different, but these are the causes our engineers find most often:
- The certificate revocation list published by your internal certificate authority expired because a new one wasn't published in time.
- The CRL or OCSP address embedded in the certificate points to a server or URL that was retired or is offline.
- Firewalls or proxies prevent clients and servers from reaching the revocation list, especially from outside the office network.
- The CA server itself was shut down, decommissioned or failed, leaving nothing to refresh the revocation list.
- An offline root CA's revocation list reached its expiry date and was never renewed.
Why it matters
Revocation checking lets systems refuse certificates that have been lost or compromised. When the check can't be completed, Windows plays it safe and blocks the connection, so smart card logons, VPN, wireless and internal sites can fail together. These outages tend to hit at once and on a schedule tied to the revocation list's lifetime, which makes them alarming and hard to diagnose. Turning off revocation checks to restore access removes an important security safeguard.
How AskTechGurus fixes it
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Frequently asked questions
Does this mean we've had a security breach?
No. It means Windows couldn't reach or read the revocation information, not that a certificate was compromised. It's an infrastructure problem rather than an attack.
Will it happen again?
It can, since revocation lists expire on a schedule. Part of the resolution is identifying why publication stopped so the same date doesn't cause another outage.