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Google asking many to select a client certificate erroneously

15 points by emilfihlman ↗ HN
Google just prompted me to select a certificate for lh3.googleusercontent.com:443

I'm not alone in this, also happened to my friend, and also posted to Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/1u7h672/browser_asking_me_to_select_certificate_is_it_a/

Seems like somebody definitely misconfigured something somewhere. The question is then was this the direct result of the misconfiguration, or someone abusing a misconfiguration. Client certificates can be used to identify people so this is a good way to mass collect certs. This data could also be used to analyse client certificates that are around.

6 comments

[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 25.5 ms ] thread
a_t48
Wife also ran into this, advised her to click "no". Very odd.
karabara
First thing I saw when I reopened Chrome and had Gemini open. Thought it had something to do with my GlobalProtect VPN since there’s a security vulnerability being logged right now.
jlma
Yes, I've been having the same issue all day.
KingFelix
Any updates on this? Seems a bit odd, that Reddit post is deleted and a few others in tech support as well? Not seeing the behavior anymore, but would be nice to know what happened.
cwb71
From https://support.cloud.google.com/portal/system-status:

Status: Fully Resolved

Product group: Google Workspace

Products affected: Admin Console, Chrome Browser, Endpoint Management

Start time: Tuesday, June 16, 2026, 10:28:15 PM GMT-07:00

End time: Tuesday, June 16, 2026, 10:28:24 PM GMT-07:00

Description: A subset of users within the EU and Americas regions may have encountered a TLS certificate pop-up while using Workspace Apps.

Steps to reproduce: Impacted users may have encountered a popup where "lh3.googleusercontent.com" is asking for a TLS certificate when using any Workspace Apps.

This issue does not impact any critical functions on the corresponding Apps, as an option to bypass the prompt is available to users.

Workaround: The issue is mitigated now.

Updates: Tuesday, June 16, 2026, 5:31:51 PM GMT-07:00:

We are investigating a potential issue with Chrome Browser.

We will provide more information by Tuesday, 2026-06-16 18:00 PDT.

Tuesday, June 16, 2026, 5:40:40 PM GMT-07:00:

We are investigating the authentication prompt issue on Chrome browser beginning on Tuesday, 2026-06-16 05:30 PDT.

Our engineering team continues to investigate the issue.

We will provide an update by Tuesday, 2026-06-16 19:00 PDT with current details.

We apologize to all who are affected by the disruption.

Tuesday, June 16, 2026, 7:05:40 PM GMT-07:00:

We are investigating the authentication prompt issue while using Workspace Apps beginning on Tuesday, 2026-06-16 05:30 PDT.

Our engineering team has identified the root cause and mitigation is currently underway. We do not have ETA for mitigation at the moment.

We will provide an update by Tuesday, 2026-06-16 20:30 PDT with current details.

Tuesday, June 16, 2026, 8:16:33 PM GMT-07:00:

We are investigating the authentication prompt issue while using Workspace Apps beginning on Tuesday, 2026-06-16 05:30 PDT.

Our engineering team has identified the root cause and mitigation is currently underway. We do not have ETA for mitigation at the moment.

We will provide an update by Wednesday, 2026-06-17 00:00 PDT with current details.

Tuesday, June 16, 2026, 10:28:15 PM GMT-07:00:

The issue with Workspace Apps has been resolved for all affected users within the EU and Americas regions as of Tuesday, 2026-06-16 19:41 PDT

From a preliminary analysis, the issue was due to a configuration error that inadvertently requested client certificates. Our engineers have mitigated the issue by fully rolling back the affected configurations to a previous working state.

We thank you for your patience while we worked on resolving the issue.

rustcleaner
Gemini has been broken for days in another way (as a Qubes OS user):

1. Open a fresh browser profile, one which you have never logged into anything with.

2. Begin a conversation with gemini.google.com (do not sign-in!)

3. Within the first 3 exchanges, Gemini will twiddle, answer, delete the answer, and kick your prompt back into the entry field.

4. Continue submitting that prompt dozens of times, and see no difference in behavior from (3) above.

There is a plebbit thread about it up for a couple days:

https://redlib.catsarch.com/r/GeminiAI/comments/1u6rlos/gemi...

... but I'm beginning to think either Google Gemini team does not review the subplebbit or they just don't care (since being signed in seems to resolve the error, and so it's "accidental" friction which is pushing for more registrations and/or subscriptions).

I for one don't subscribe and avoid accounts where possible, and I will never subscribe or create an account. If this is Google's intention, then they need to be honest and substitute the prompt entry box with a log-in form. What's happening now just looks like incompetence!