macOS Updates not working on Virgin Media

[mike_]

Hi,

macOS updates do not seem to be working on Virgin Media.

If you try and update via system preferences you will see this:

If you try and do it from the command line you will see this:

I have confirmed the same issue with 3 other Virgin Media users in my city, and also confirmed with 2 other users on different ISPs that they are not having this issue.

Apparently, error -1012 is related to SSL problems and suggests a man in the middle attack. Has Virgin's anti-piracy filter gone rogue and started blocking Apple updates or something?

How can I escalate this issue?

[Client62]

Virgin Media's Web Safe ( Virus Safe & Child Safe ) are DNS content filters.

If you changed to Google Public DNS i.e.  8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4  that would allow those to be ruled out.

The other thing to check is one of Apple's VPNs is not in play.

The link below should return ISP Virgin Media Limited, an IPv4 IP, no IPv6 IP and the Location should be about right.

https://whatismyipaddress.com/

[mike_]

I don't have Web Safe turned on.

The issue happens whichever DNS service I use.

I've already ruled out iCloud Private Relay.

The anti-piracy block works by inspecting the plain-text SNI header when an HTTPS connection is being established. They then inject their own content. That's what leads me to believe it's something in VM's network that is breaking the connection, as though the anti-piracy filter is blocking certain connections to Apple.

[mike_]

I've now reached out to other Mac users across the country and this is only an issue for Virgin Media users.

How can this be escalated to your network team to sort out?

[Gareth_L]

Hello mike_,

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

I am sorry to hear you are having an issue with certain Apple updates.

This is sometimes due to a hardware error on the device, But as you have investigated with other users on our service. I guess that is not the case.

How are things looking now? as its been a few days since your last post.

Gareth_L

[dbrewood]

It looks like I'm being hit with a similar issue whereby I'm unable to get updates to apps in the App Store on my Mac. If it helps I'm on Voom Fibre 1......

[mike_]

What do you get if you run softwareupdate --list in the command line?

[dbrewood]

I get:

Software Update Tool
Finding available software
No new software available

But if I look to update apps in the app store (TestFlight in particular) I just get the whirling update button with no update taking place.