An expired certificate warning is observed when accessing the vCenter Server using port 7444. while running a third party scanner

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

• While accessing https://vCenter's FQDN:7444, a browser warning indicated that the certificate presented by the server had expired. Further inspection on the URL > Certficate issuer > We confirmed that the certificate was issued to ssoserver,dc=vsphere,dc=local and was no longer valid.

Environment

• VMware vCenter 8.x
• VMware vCenter 7.x

Cause

• The expired certificate was tied to port 7444, which was previously used by the SSO Lookup Service in older versions of vCenter. This port is no longer required or used in vCenter 6.5 and above.
• Port 7444 has been deprecated since vSphere 6.5. However, in some environments, the service on this port remains enabled, causing the expired certificate to still be presented—even though it’s not in active use by any critical service. This leads to unnecessary security alerts but has no functional impact.

Resolution

• Disable Port 7444 on the PSC or Embedded Center. Refer Disable port 7444 on the PSC or embedded vCenter appliance