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Cannot download updates: Failed Software Update - Refusing invalid certificate from host: swcdn.apple.com

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1 answer
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I have a MacBook 2019 and when I am trying to install macOS Ventura I get the following error immediately before the download starts: > **Installation failed** > An error occurred while installing the selected updates. After checking install.log (available at About this Mac / System report / Software / Logs) I can see that the download fails with the following error:
Failed Software Update - Refusing invalid certificate from host: swcdn.apple.com
I have also tried running the softwareupdate tool with no luck:
➜ softwareupdate -l
Software Update Tool

Finding available software
The operation couldn't be completed. (NSURLErrorDomain error -1012.)
This generates a similar certificate error for a different URL:
Failed Software Update - Refusing invalid certificate from host: swscan.apple.com
Opening the specific URLs in the browser shows me they have a valid certificate. As a last effort, I did update the root certificate to be always trusted but this did not help either. The time is correctly set on my machine. Have anyone experienced a similar issue? What can be the solution? enter image description here
Asked by NoNameProvided (141 rep)
Mar 1, 2023, 07:00 PM
Last activity: Jul 20, 2025, 12:05 AM