Stay updated on certificate-related infosec topics, including SSL/TLS, PKI, and digital certificate management for robust cyber security.
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Background for this topic.
Digital certificates are electronic documents that verify the ownership of a public cryptographic key by an individual, organization, or device. Issued by trusted Certificate Authorities (CAs) within a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), certificates enable secure communication by confirming identities and supporting encryption protocols like TLS. They include information such as the subject’s name, public key, issuer, validity period, and digital signature from the CA.
Security concerns with certificates focus on risks like CA compromise or fraudulent issuance, which can allow attackers to impersonate legitimate entities and intercept or alter encrypted traffic. Expired or revoked certificates may cause connection failures or be exploited if clients do not properly validate them. Effective certificate lifecycle management—including timely renewal, revocation checking (via CRLs or OCSP), and monitoring for unauthorized certificates—is essential to maintaining trust and preventing man-in-the-middle attacks or unauthorized access.
Compliance failures and unsatisfactory responses mount from the long-time certificate authority Mozilla is following in Google Chrome's footsteps in officially distrusting Entrust as a root certificate authority (CA) following what it says was a protracted period of compliance failures.…
Some 'exceptional circumstances' will be given a minor extension as lawsuits start to fly As the DigiCert drama continues, we now have a better idea of the size and scope of the problem – with the organization's infosec boss admitting the SSL/TLS certificate revocation sweep will affect tens of thousands of its customers, some of which have warned that the short notice may have real-world safety implications and disrupt critical services.…
DigiCert urges critical infrastructure operators to request a delay if they cannot reissue their certificates, as required by an ongoing certificate mass-revocation process announced on Tuesday. [...]
Certificate authority (CA) DigiCert has warned that it will be revoking a subset of SSL/TLS certificates within 24 hours due to an oversight with how it verified if a digital certificate is issued to the rightful owner of a domain
For the want of an underscore DigiCert has given some unlucky customers 24 hours to replace their SSL/TLS security certificates it previously issued them – due to a five-year-old blunder in its backend software.…
DigiCert is warning that it will be mass-revoking SSL/TLS certificates due to a bug in how the company verified if a customer owned or operated a domain and requires impacted customers to reissue certificates within 24 hours. [...]