I added the NTP sync and that unfortunately did not help.
I did notice, however, that when I unplug the ethernet cable after it freezes, the cable disconnect interrupt triggers and the program is able to resume normally. The AuthenticateAsClient() method throws its exception as expected.
Does this imply it might be something on the ethernet side of things? Is this a common issue?
Update:
Also tried implementing TLS entropy as shown in this post with no success.