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GitHub Copilot in VS-Code — Fixing the “self-signed certificate” error
Some time ago I got access to the GitHub Copilot BETA mode but I missed out on the opportunity to testing it because I was having a problem with a “self signed certificate” and all I could find on the internet was “You must be behind a firewall”. So I wanted to write this brief post for people that find the same problem and don’t want to waste a couple of hours of their lives troubleshooting.
This year our company finally got licenses and I was part of the group of few people that had the same error, more specifically this:
[ERROR] [default] [2023–03–21T15:19:15.057Z] GitHub Copilot could not connect to server. Extension activation failed: “self signed certificate in certificate chain”
Thankfully some great developer provided a really detailed explanation of what the issue was:
Most corporate networks have a ‘Man-in-the-middle’ appliance that dynamically breaks open all secure SSL traffic leaving home to enter the internet. This ensures they can inspected any traffic leaving, including your online banking. Usually automation scrubs the traffic looking for theft of company secrets or IP and raises alerts.
It all gets logged and reviewed further if need be. This action leaves behind a fake cert chain as a fingerprint. The…
