Unable to login to Endpoint Protection Manager Java and Web console with error [0xFFFF]

Products

• Endpoint Security Complete
• Endpoint Protection

Issue/Introduction

After upgrading to Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager(SEPM) 14.4, login to web console is failing with error [0xFFFF]. And while login to SEPM Java console getting "Unexpected error occurred during login [0x00]"

Catalina.Err file:

WARNING: Disabled the global canonical file name cache to protect against CVE-2024-56337 when starting the WebResourceSet at [D:\Program Files (x86)\Symantec\Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager\tomcat\webapps\ROOT] which is part of the web application []
Aug 27, 2026 9:03:58 AM org.apache.tomcat.util.digester.Digester fatalError
SEVERE: Parse fatal error at line [5] column [23]
org.xml.sax.SAXParseException; systemId: file:/D:/Program%20Files%20(x86)/Symantec/Symantec%20Endpoint%20Protection%20Manager/tomcat/conf/web.xml; lineNumber: 5; columnNumber: 23; The element type "cookie-config" must be terminated by the matching end-tag "".
... 
Aug 27, 2026 9:03:58 AM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext startInternal
SEVERE: Context [] startup failed due to previous errors

Environment

SEPM: 14.4

Cause

During or after the upgrade, an attempt was made to apply security hardening to a machine by modifying tomcat\conf\web.xml to enforce secure cookies (adding `true). However, a syntax mistake occurred due to a missing / closing tag, which corrupted the XML file.

Because of this malformed web.xml file, the ROOT context ([]) fails to deploy.

Resolution

Please follow below steps to resolve the issue:

1. Stop all SEPM services.
2. Open the web.xml file in a text editor.
3. Search for the string "session-config".
4. Ensure that the <cookie-config> element is properly closed with </cookie-config> and save the file.
5. Start all SEPM services.
6. Try logging in to the Java and web console.

Additional Information

After upgrading to 14.4, make sure administrator's password doesn't' contains special characters like '%', '+'

Note: By default web.xml doesn't have <cookie-config></cookie-config> parameter.