Verification Required But No Puzzle to Solve

[AvenidaDelGato]

Product: Madden NFL 20
Platform:PC
Which console generation do you have?
What is your gamertag/PSN ID? AvenidaDelGato
Date/time issue occurred 7/3/2020 - present
What type of issue do you have? Crash/Freeze
Which mode has this happened in? Ultimate Team
Which part of the mode? Seasons
Summarize your bug The prompt for verification pops up but does not proceed to the puzzle when pressing A or spacebar.
How often does the bug occur? Every time (100%)
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Open Ultimate Team and wait for the Verification Required prompt to appear.
What happens when the bug occurs? The prompt appears but the puzzle does not appear when pressing A on the controller or space bar.
What do you expect to see? The puzzle.
PS4 Crash Reporting: Please copy the text you put in the crash report here.
What is the AMD or Nvidia Model Number of your graphics card? NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti
Enter RAM memory size in GB 16GB

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There is Reddit post dedicated to this issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/MaddenUltimateTeam/comments/hl2jn7/verification_required_but_no_puzzle_to_s...

[EA_Kent · Accepted solution]

@AvenidaDelGato 

I appreciate the details!

I'll pass this along to the Madden team for a look. 

/Kent

[Bandit75238]

https://www.reddit.com/r/MaddenUltimateTeam/comments/hl2jn7/verification_required_but_no_puzzle_to_s...

[EA_Kent]

Hey @AvenidaDelGato,

Are you still getting stuck at this same spot with the puzzle not loading up? 

/Kent

[AvenidaDelGato]

Yes

[Bandit75238]

Yes.

[Bandit75238]

From link provided quoting my posts.......

Been happening to me for days. Got EA help to call me. I am on PC. They had me clear my web browser cache. ( the puzzle is in game, doesn't have anything to do with browser). So they couldn't do anything and said nobody else has had the issue.

On my own I verified/repaired the game. No change. Restarted pc. Deleted all files in local and roaming under origin except local. No change.

Gonna try changing language to french and then back to english and see what happens. This was suggested by someone regarding the fifia game when they had this issue; and figure it is worth a try.

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/Your-device-or-browser-cannot-connect-to-verification-server/t...

Oh yea changed various graphic settings in game and in nvidia ctrl panel, thinking maybe some setting is cause the icons to not show up. Didn't help.

Found a post from almost exactly one year ago with the same issue.

https://old.muthead.com/forums/madden/mut-discussion/1506722-relentless-verification-required-pop-up

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and

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Didn't fix it. The second I entered Ultimate Team I got the puzzle but with no icons. I can maybe check one player/category on auction house, then get the pop-up and have to wait 20 seconds or whatever for it to close. Then I can check another then it pops up again. So I am seeing the puzzle screen at like a ratio of 20 to 1. So everything takes 20-30 seconds to do. Very annoying, wasting my time.

[EA_Kent]

Thanks, I appreciate the details!

When you have a chance can you try setting a different DNS in Windows to see if that helps? I've seen cases in the past where using a different DNS can fix this. 

You can change the DNS in Windows through the TCP/IP Settings. For more info on how to get there check out the Microsoft Support website. If you select the Manual option you can enter a DNS of your choice. I usually recommend the public Google DNS (primary: 8.8.8.8, secondary: 8.8.4.4), but if there's a different public DNS you'd rather use instead that should be fine. 

Let me know if the puzzle still isn't loading up after that. 

/Kent

[AvenidaDelGato]

@EA_Kent I tried this solution a couple days ago. I was previously using CloudFlare's DNS (1.1.1.1) and switched it to Google's DNS (8.8.8.8). It did not solve the problem.

I happen to have a background in IT and I believe this is a server-side issue. Here's what I've noticed:
If you run nslookup on cdn.arkoselabs.com you should get the following results:

Server: dns.google
Address: 8.8.8.8

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: cdn.arkoselabs.com.cdn.cloudflare.net
Addresses: 2606:4700::6812:1940
2606:4700::6812:1840
104.18.24.64
104.18.25.64
Aliases: cdn.arkoselabs.com

It's clear that cdn.arkoselabs.com is an alias for cdn.arkoselabs.com.cdn.cloudflare.net. Now try running an nslookup on the actual host name (which Madden 20 also uses when the verification prompt appears). You should get the following:

Server: dns.google
Address: 8.8.8.8

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: cdn.arkoselabs.com.cdn.cloudflare.net
Addresses: 2606:4700::6812:1840
2606:4700::6812:1940
104.18.24.64
104.18.25.64

So right off the bat we can see that the primary IPv6 host is different for the alias and the actual host name. 

Now open your browser and navigate to cdn.arkoselabs.com, it redirects you to HTTPS and the page resolves. If you inspect the SSL certificate it shows that the certificate was updated on 07/01/2020 which happens to coincide with the time these issues began for PC users. 

Now navigate to the actual hostname (cdn.arkoselabs.com.cdn.cloudflare.net) and you'll get an error which states DNS resolution error. CloudFlare's explanation is:

"something is wrong with this site's configuration. Usually this happens when accounts have been signed up with a partner organization (e.g., a hosting provider) and the provider's DNS fails."

Furthermore, this page cannot be loaded with HTTPS and the following error appears:

"This site can’t provide a secure connectioncdn.arkoselabs.com.cdn.cloudflare.net uses an unsupported protocol.
ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH"

Finally navigate to ssllabs.com and enter each of the hostnames. For cdn.arkoselabs.com the grade is capped at B and it shows that TLS 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 are supported. However for cdn.arkoselabs.com.cdn.cloudflare.net it gives the error "Assessment failed: Failed to communicate with the secure server." If you scroll down on the page is says "No secure protocol supported. Possibly this server only supports a draft version of TLS 1.3"

This leads me to conclude that the issue is caused by the following problems:

1) There is an issue with the provider's DNS. If you run a who.is on arkoselabs.com you'll find that they use AWS Route 53 as their DNS provider. 
2) There is an issue caused by the SSL protocol. This is supported by the fact that Chrome and ssllabs.com both report protocol errors. 
3) There is an issue caused by the renewed SSL certificate. Perhaps a mismatch between the CloudFlare edge server and the backend server. 

[EA_Kent · Accepted solution]

@AvenidaDelGato 

I appreciate the details!

I'll pass this along to the Madden team for a look. 

/Kent

[Bandit75238]

Thank you for the help Kent!