Your Rift will not work anymore because Oculus allowed a certificate to expire

[Master Disaster]

 

So the certificate used to sign one of the rifts library files expired today and it means if you own a Rift it won't work until Oculus release an update.

 

You can workaround the issue by changing the system date back to any date prior to March 7th

Quote

If you own an Oculus Rift VR headset, you might have noticed that as of today, it won't work, at all. Due to an issue regarding the security certificate of OculusAppFramework.dll, which expired this morning, the headsets can no longer connect to the Oculus Runtime Service, which is a requirement for the Rift to turn on and function. This problem affects all known versions of the Rift, and according to Nate Mitchell, the head of Oculus, the company is aware of the issue, and are working on fixing it as soon as possible. A current workaround involves resetting your PC's clock, and setting it to a date prior to March 7th.

https://gbatemp.net/threads/oculus-rifts-face-widespread-issue-that-prevents-headsets-from-functioning.498234/

 

I wonder why Oculus didn't fix this earlier? Seems like an odd thing to let expire.

 

[givingtnt]

rip

[DildorTheDecent]

Maybe they didn't think it would catch on...

[Max_Settings]

Honestly, the Vive is worth every penny more over the Rift.

[Master Disaster]

Just now, DildorTheDecent said:

Maybe they didn't think it would catch on...

Well the fact this happened a lot of hours ago (depending on timezone) and it's not really been reported by anybody speaks volumes about how much VR has caught on tbh.

[Connor Price]

That was pretty shortsighted of them. In fact, it's a pretty monumental fuck up in the grand scheme of things. "Oh, that nice $400 VR Headset you have? Sorry, I'm afraid you can't use that until we get this certificate re-signed because we couldn't be arsed to renew it."

[aezakmi]

classic

[LAwLz]

So many questions...

 

1) Why does the Oculus need a certificate to work? Does it use some always-online DRM or something?

2) Why didn't they inform their customers? Seems like a lot of people had no idea what was going on until they found that tweet. They don't even have information about the issue on their website. At least not from what I can see. Piss poor communication.

3) Why wasn't the certificate renewed in time? For my shitty website I have it set up to remind me several times before it expires, several weeks ahead of time. Surely Facebook/Oculus have the skills to set a reminder for something extremely crucial like this.

[jagdtigger]

6 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Surely Facebook/Oculus have the skills to set a reminder for something extremely crucial like this.

Do i need to say more? What did you expect from them, i mean really?

[Sakkura]

1 hour ago, Max_Settings said:

Honestly, the Vive is worth every penny more over the Rift.

No it isn't. Worse controllers, worse comfort, no integrated audio (unless you pay even more for a headstrap upgrade), lack of ASW leading to higher hardware requirements...

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

So many questions...

 

1) Why does the Oculus need a certificate to work? Does it use some always-online DRM or something?

2) Why didn't they inform their customers? Seems like a lot of people had no idea what was going on until they found that tweet. They don't even have information about the issue on their website. At least not from what I can see. Piss poor communication.

3) Why wasn't the certificate renewed in time? For my shitty website I have it set up to remind me several times before it expires, several weeks ahead of time. Surely Facebook/Oculus have the skills to set a reminder for something extremely crucial like this.

1. Because of app security concerns. This has nothing to do with always-online DRM. It uses your local system clock FFS.

 

2. They did. Reddit, Twitter, official forum (on their website).

 

3. They fucked up. It happens sometimes, especially for a relatively new company (which Oculus was in 2015 when this was set up).

[Sakkura]

2 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

Well the fact this happened a lot of hours ago (depending on timezone) and it's not really been reported by anybody speaks volumes about how much VR has caught on tbh.

It was reported on Neowin within 2 hours, Tom's Hardware soon after, then Ars Technica... it's even on WCCFtech (but I promise it's still real!)

[i_build_nanosuits]

changed the time back

4 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

 

So the certificate used to sign one of the rifts library files expired today and it means if you own a Rift it won't work until Oculus release an update.

 

You can workaround the issue by changing the system date back to any date prior to March 7th

https://gbatemp.net/threads/oculus-rifts-face-widespread-issue-that-prevents-headsets-from-functioning.498234/

 

I wonder why Oculus didn't fix this earlier? Seems like an odd thing to let expire.

 

Rift has not worked all day...now i NEED to play project cars 2 VR REALLY BAD and it does not work AT ALL...i tried EVERYGTHING..i think all rifts on the face of this earth as of earlier today are NON operational...that's quite something to be pissed about...for sure!!

[i_build_nanosuits]

so bored...i have time to do this...

 

 

 

[ARikozuM]

 

Seriously, this isn't a big deal. Those of us who own Vives will likely laugh about this, but it isn't like they need to bring a fuel truck to each home. I'd give it a few days before signing their deaths. 

[i_build_nanosuits]

1 hour ago, ARikozuM said:

 

 

Seriously, this isn't a big deal. Those of us who own Vives will likely laugh about this, but it isn't like they need to bring a fuel truck to each home. I'd give it a few days before signing their deaths. 

 

1 hour ago, huilun02 said:

I'm sure you can't get any better product support for a $600+ purchase

actually i got it working i had to roll back the date on my computer AND REBOOT (this is the part i forgot for it to work..) but still...it sucks

[i_build_nanosuits]

6 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

You can workaround the issue by changing the system date back to any date prior to March 7th AND THEN REBOOT before you launch Oculus

it's not stated anywhere but if you do not reboot the PC the fix DOES NOT WORK.

But thanks!

 

EDIT: and then once you're booted into windows you can even re-enable auto set date and oculus will still work.

[Mihle]

6 hours ago, Max_Settings said:

Honestly, the Vive is worth every penny more over the Rift.

I disagree.

 

I don't have any of them tho.

[Yoinkerman]

Is this so they can force some kind of invasive update

[LAwLz]

7 hours ago, Sakkura said:

1. Because of app security concerns. This has nothing to do with always-online DRM. It uses your local system clock FFS.

What "app security concern" exactly?

From what I've gathered it might not be "always-online" DRM, but it is some DRM that is failing. My guess is that it is one of the functions to block other headsets/software from working with the Oculus headset/software that fails. I don't see why else running something locally would require a certificate.

 

7 hours ago, Sakkura said:

2. They did. Reddit, Twitter, official forum (on their website).

Not anywhere near enough judging by how many people are confused. They should have sent out a mail or something along those lines. You shouldn't have to follow someone on Twitter or Reddit, just to get information about why your product has stopped working.

 

7 hours ago, Sakkura said:

3. They fucked up. It happens sometimes, especially for a relatively new company (which Oculus was in 2015 when this was set up).

Forgetting to renew a certificate is quite a massive fuckup though.

It's an amateur mistake that just shouldn't happen. Did the person responsible for the certificate quit or something?

If you're going to design your headset in a way that it needs to constantly have a valid certificate to run then you better make sure to update that cert.

[Xander Cousins]

This does seem to be a really huge f*** up on Oculus' side, Like come on to let one of your certificates expire is really something. Like they should be proud that they somehow managed to let a KEY part of their product expire without realising until it did. 

 

You can't really put this down to being a new company for their mistake, As stated in above posts they didn't spread this around to allow people to know what was happening with their products and again they somehow forgot to renew a Certificate for a product like that takes skill to mess up that big.

 

GG...

[Sakkura]

5 hours ago, LAwLz said:

What "app security concern" exactly?

From what I've gathered it might not be "always-online" DRM, but it is some DRM that is failing. My guess is that it is one of the functions to block other headsets/software from working with the Oculus headset/software that fails. I don't see why else running something locally would require a certificate.

 

Not anywhere near enough judging by how many people are confused. They should have sent out a mail or something along those lines. You shouldn't have to follow someone on Twitter or Reddit, just to get information about why your product has stopped working.

 

Forgetting to renew a certificate is quite a massive fuckup though.

It's an amateur mistake that just shouldn't happen. Did the person responsible for the certificate quit or something?

If you're going to design your headset in a way that it needs to constantly have a valid certificate to run then you better make sure to update that cert.

If malware replaced one of the .dll files in Oculus' software, then suddenly that malware can do a lot of damage. They use code signing to prevent that. Probably a good idea since Oculus' software does some low-level stuff, working with the graphics driver and network stuff etc.

 

It has literally nothing to do with DRM. What kind of terrible DRM would let people circumvent it just by changing their local system clock?

 

They should have sent out a mail? Well, they did now. With $15 store credit to compensate people for the downtime.

 

And yes, it's a big fuckup that they let their certificates expire. I doubt they'll ever tell us exactly why that happened, but it doesn't matter - shouldn't ever happen regardless.

[Orcblood]

They sent out emails early this morning saying how to fix and that they would give a $15 dollar credit for who ever has used their oculus since February 1st of this year.  Just remoted into my htpc and tried launching the Oculus software. Still had the reported message. Downloaded and launched the repair exe through the link provided in the email, clicked repair, it did its thing for about a minute and wala it works now.

 

Now kicking myself for not touching my oculus all last month. Would of loved that 15 dollar credit.

 

 

[LAwLz]

2 hours ago, Sakkura said:

If malware replaced one of the .dll files in Oculus' software, then suddenly that malware can do a lot of damage. They use code signing to prevent that. Probably a good idea since Oculus' software does some low-level stuff, working with the graphics driver and network stuff etc.

 

It has literally nothing to do with DRM. What kind of terrible DRM would let people circumvent it just by changing their local system clock?

Assuming that this is related to some DRM, putting the clock back would not let people circumvent it. Putting the clock back would just make legitimate software work since the certificate would be valid. Unsigned software and hardware would still be invalid even if the clock was set back.

 

It would be interesting to get more info regarding this, because right now both you and I are just speculating.

 

2 hours ago, Sakkura said:

They should have sent out a mail? Well, they did now. With $15 store credit to compensate people for the downtime.

A bit late don't you think? Their communication was slow and bad, probably in an attempt to not bring attention to the issue.

It's good that they sent out an email now, and very good that they gave people compensation, but you just have to look at the massive number of people who were confused and tried to reinstall the runtime to realize that their communication was lacking.

Sending out an email when the issue was resolved was good, but it should have been sent out when it was detected as well.

[Sakkura]

11 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Assuming that this is related to some DRM, putting the clock back would not let people circumvent it. Putting the clock back would just make legitimate software work since the certificate would be valid. Unsigned software and hardware would still be invalid even if the clock was set back.

 

It would be interesting to get more info regarding this, because right now both you and I are just speculating.

You're speculating. I'm citing facts. This is not DRM.

[i_build_nanosuits]

28 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

A bit late don't you think? Their communication was slow and bad, probably in an attempt to not bring attention to the issue.

no, not at all...they were clear, on facebook, twitter and on their website ''We are sorry and we are aware of the problem, we are working on it to fix it as fast as possible'' what else more could they say...and now they give me 15$ for yesterday, i'll spend it and i'm happy...it's fair, they behaved correctly.

 

EDIT:

28 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Sending out an email when the issue was resolved was good, but it should have been sent out when it was detected as well.

 

Sry i didn't read your whole thing...i would agree with this though...next time if they send an email or something that will prevent me from wiping off oculus softwares like i did yesterday before checking online for a way to solve this issue...if i would have known i would have not do that...but i lost 5 minutes or so, so yeah...but you do have a point.

 

2 hours ago, jman629 said:

They sent out emails early this morning saying how to fix and that they would give a $15 dollar credit for who ever has used their oculus since February 1st of this year.  Just remoted into my htpc and tried launching the Oculus software. Still had the reported message. Downloaded and launched the repair exe through the link provided in the email, clicked repair, it did its thing for about a minute and wala it works now.

 

Now kicking myself for not touching my oculus all last month. Would of loved that 15 dollar credit.

well...yeah i think it's pretty cool that they are doing that...i use my rift all the time so i do get that 15$ to spend on the store, which is appreciated.

Edited March 8, 2018 by i_build_nanosuits