526 error on certain requests

What is the name of the domain?

example.com

What is the error number?

526

What is the error message?

526

What is the issue you’re encountering

We have Cloudflare setup to point to Frontdoor in Azure for our websute. We use the Universal SSL in Cloudflare and also use AFD managed in Azure, both using minimum TLS 1.2. This has been working fine, but we have noticed that it is causing a 526 error on certain requests - it seems to only be when there is a query string (?) and not on every page. If there was an SSL mismatch I would expect this to happen on every request, but it only happens sporadically, and only with query strings. I can also see that Cloudflare is not blocking it. It works if we downgrade from strict to full. I have tried adding the Cloudflare origin SSL to Azure, but it is not accepted in Front door as it is not on the valid list for Microsoft. Any suggestions on how to fix this please?

Was the site working with SSL prior to adding it to Cloudflare?

Yes

What is the current SSL/TLS setting?

Full

Hi there,

A 526 means Cloudflare could not validate the certificate at the origin.
When you have SSL/TLS mode set to Full SSL (Strict), you must make sure that the certificate at the origin is within the validity period, issued by a valid CA and covers the hostname being hit.

If any of these conditions fail Cloudflare will show a 526 instead.

If you have an out of date or self-signed certificate or one that doesn’t cover the hostname, please either use a Cloudflare origin certificate instead, or downgrade the SSL/TLS encryption in your Cloudflare dashboard from Full Strict to Full.

Take care.

Hi,

Thanks for this, I had found similar in the documentation.

What is weird is that some pages worked and some didn’t – I would expect all of the pages to throw an SSL error? Any ideas on that?

Kind regards,

Ben

Hi there,

By pages, you mean paths or subdomains?
If it’s in different hostnames, make sure the certificate presented covers that hostname.

Try running openssl to the origin or curl to the specific path with --connect-to and check ‘Server cert’ and see what certificate you get

Take care.

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