"ESET LiveGrid is not accessible ... The credentials used to access ESET LiveGrid servers are not correct."

[Outcast 4]

I'm currently running a trial of ESET NOD32 Antivirus 14.0.22.0 on Windows 10 Pro x64 20H2. This error just popped up on the main window:

"ESET LiveGrid is not accessible ... The credentials used to access ESET LiveGrid servers are not correct."

I have changed nothing. I don't even know what "credentials" it would be referring to. I was just sitting here, trying to work, not interacting with the product, and this notification/error appeared out of nowhere.

I'm guessing this is an issues on ESET's side. What's going on?

Edited March 5, 2021 by Outcast

[BastiFantasti 0]

The same problem with our organization.

[Outcast 4]

Now the message is gone. So, it was an ESET issue, as I thought. Authentication servers having issues? (Rhetorical)

I don't want to sound rude, but the whole reason I'm trying to get away from Microsoft Defender in the first place is that it wasted my time.

[BastiFantasti 0]

The same problem in our organization.

and with other modules like Web Blocker.

Edited March 5, 2021 by BastiFantasti
mistakes

[mcrouse 1]

I'm getting a similar message on some of my endpoint security deployments except it says "web control not fully functional because of a license problem".  The warnings come and go but it notifies the users each time so it's very annoying. It would be nice to get some sort of confirmation from ESET's end that they are having server issues so I don't waste my time trying to diagnose an issue I can't fix

[itman 1,627]

Appears Eset is currently experiencing some issue with its licensing servers.

The LiveGrid alert noted will display when there are issues with Eset license installed on the source device.

Edited March 5, 2021 by itman

[Marcos 4,909]

17 minutes ago, mcrouse said:

I'm getting a similar message on some of my endpoint security deployments except it says "web control not fully functional because of a license problem".  The warnings come and go but it notifies the users each time so it's very annoying. It would be nice to get some sort of confirmation from ESET's end that they are having server issues so I don't waste my time trying to diagnose an issue I can't fix

I was able to find only a trial version of ESET NOD32 Antivirus registered with your forum email address. Please provide logs collected with ESET Log Collector on the machine with ESET Endpoint Security installed.

[Marcos 4,909]

32 minutes ago, BastiFantasti said:

The same problem in our organization.

and with other modules like Web Blocker.

 

I was able to find only already expired licenses registered with your forum email address. Please provide your public license ID in the form of XXX-XXX-XXX.

[mcrouse 1]

The email address associated with this forum account is a personal email. My enterprise license should be valid 33C-PGW-62H   My warning messages have decreased by about 75% in the past 10 minutes.   Maybe the license server issue is resolving itself

Edited March 5, 2021 by mcrouse
more info

[Marcos 4,909]

It's been confirmed that there was a problem with the Parental/Web Control database in one of the data centers. It was fixed at 4:15 PM CET. Are you still experiencing issues?

[mcrouse 1]

no more issues on my end. Thanks for the confirmation!

[Outcast 4]

1 minute ago, Marcos said:

It's been confirmed that there was a problem with the Parental/Web Control database in one of the data centers. It was fixed at 4:15 PM CET. Are you still experiencing issues?

I'm not still having issues, but this makes me wonder why issues in one DC would affect customers to this extent. Redundancy? Does ESET understand that it's embarrassing and annoying to be giving a presentation and have a goofy alert pop up, and then to waste time interpreting the alert?

I've only been using the product for a matter of days. Is this a frequent thing?

[RicardoDeLoco 0]

Though I see this issue as solved I still see issues on my company. I fixed my laptop upgrading to ESET 8 but why would I need to do it on all other machine that have 7.3? Is there a delay on the Authentication servers?

Thanks

Cheers

[Marcos 4,909]

6 minutes ago, RicardoDeLoco said:

Though I see this issue as solved I still see issues on my company. I fixed my laptop upgrading to ESET 8 but why would I need to do it on all other machine that have 7.3? Is there a delay on the Authentication servers?

Upgrade to v8 is not necessary (yet recommended), however, it would have no effect on this issue.

[RicardoDeLoco 0]

1 minute ago, Marcos said:

Upgrade to v8 is not necessary (yet recommended), however, it would have no effect on this issue.

Understood. Other machines are still experiencing the issue though. Any advise?

 

[Marcos 4,909]

3 minutes ago, RicardoDeLoco said:

Understood. Other machines are still experiencing the issue though. Any advise?

 

That's weird since the communication was redirected to other data centers with servers that work alright.
Please carry on as follows:
- enable advanced Web Control logging in the advanced setup -> tools -> diagnostics on a machine where the issue persists
- open an arbitrary website in a browser
- disable logging
- collect logs with ESET Log Collector and upload the generated archive here.

[Outcast 4]

37 minutes ago, RicardoDeLoco said:

Understood. Other machines are still experiencing the issue though. Any advise?

 

Sounds to me like ESET's failover was manual and not automatic, and software clients aren't smart enough to retry before throwing an error. I bet rebooting the affected machines or perhaps simply recycling their network adapters will magically "resolve" the issue at least some of the time. The clients will be forced to reconnect, and they should reconnect to functional servers in so doing.

[Marcos 4,909]

4 minutes ago, Outcast said:

Sounds to me like ESET's failover was manual and not automatic

In case of authentication issues fall-over cannot be automatic. Otherwise in case of an invalid / expired license the client would have to try to connect to each of the servers to make sure it's rejected on all of them which would take time and create an unnecessary burden on servers  (a kind of DoS attack) if dozens of thousands clients would do that.

This issue is not common at all and was resolved quickly.

[RicardoDeLoco 0]

18 minutes ago, Marcos said:

That's weird since the communication was redirected to other data centers with servers that work alright.
Please carry on as follows:
- enable advanced Web Control logging in the advanced setup -> tools -> diagnostics on a machine where the issue persists
- open an arbitrary website in a browser
- disable logging
- collect logs with ESET Log Collector and upload the generated archive here.

Number went down to 1 machine. Not a big enought sample to worry. I'll monitor and get back to in in case things change. 

I appreciate your help

Cheers

[Outcast 4]

There is no way the servers were returning "invalid/expired license" results to a range of clients with legitimate licenses unless there was serious DB corruption. I expect the servers were either returning errors or totally unreachable, and the clients weren't smart enough to interpret this.

I do this every day and I know the lingo, excuses, etc.

[Marcos 4,909]

It was authentication failing on servers in a particular data center which caused the issue.