[a45a33s]

how are auth requests supposed to reach the auth server if the networking is broken?

[bamboozled]

I’d accept this as an answer if I received a timeout or a message to say that.

Permission denied is something altogether because it implies the request reached an authorisation system, was evaluated and denied.

[sbierwagen]

Fail-secure + no separate error for timeouts maybe? If the server can't be reached then it just denies the request.