The contents of the MessageChunk shall not be interpreted until the Message is decrypted and the signature and sequence number verified.

If an error occurs during Message verification the receiver shall close the communication channel. If the receiver is the Server, it shall also send a transport error Message before closing the channel. Once the channel is closed the Client shall attempt to re-open the channel and request a new SecurityToken by sending an OpenSecureChannel request. The mechanism for sending transport errors to the Client depends on the communication channel.

The receiver shall first check the SecureChannelId. This value may be 0 if the Message is an OpenSecureChannel request. For other Messages, it shall report a Bad_SecureChannelUnknown error if the SecureChannelId is not recognized. If the Message is an OpenSecureChannel request and the SecureChannelId is not 0 then the SenderCertificate shall be the same as the SenderCertificate used to create the channel.

If the Message is secured with asymmetric algorithms, then the receiver shall verify that it supports the requested Securi tyPolicy. If the Message is the response sent to the Client, then the SecurityPolicy shall be the same as the one specified in the request. In the Server, the SecurityPolicy shall be the same as the one used to originally create the SecureChannel. The receiver shall check that the Certificate is trusted first and return Bad_CertificateUntrusted on error. The receiver shall then verify the SenderCertificate using the rules defined in OPC 10000-4. The receiver shall report the appropriate error if Certificate validation fails. The receiver shall verify the ReceiverCertificateThumbprint and report a Bad_CertificateUnknown error if it does not recognize it.

If the Message is secured with symmetric algorithms, then a Bad_SecureChannel TokenUnknown e rror shall be reported if the TokenId refers to a SecurityToken that has expired or is not recognized.

If decryption or signature validation fails, then a Bad_SecurityChecksFailed error is reported. If an implementation allows multiple SecurityModes to be used the receiver shall also verify that the Message was secured properly as required by the SecurityMode specified in the OpenSecureChannel request.

After the security validation is complete the receiver shall verify the RequestId and the SequenceNumber. If these checks fail a Bad_SecurityChecksFailed error is reported. The RequestId only needs to be verified by the Client since only the Client knows if it is valid or not.

At this point the SecureChannel knows it is dealing with an authenticated Message that was not tampered with or resent. This means the SecureChannel can return secured error responses if any further problems are encountered.

Stacks that implement UASC shall have a mechanism to log errors when invalid Messages are discarded. This mechanism is intended for developers, systems integrators and administrators to debug network system configuration issues and to detect attacks on the network.