Safari will, later this year, no longer accept new HTTPS certificates that expire more than 13 months from their creation date. That means websites using long-life SSL/TLS certs issued after the cut-off point will throw up privacy errors in Apple's browser.
The policy was unveiled by the iGiant at a Certification Authority Browser Forum (CA/Browser) meeting on Wednesday. Specifically, according to those present at the confab, from September 1, any new website cert valid for more than 398 days will not be trusted by the Safari browser and instead rejected. Older certs, issued prior to the deadline, are unaffected by this rule.
By implementing the policy in Safari, Apple will, by extension, enforce it on all iOS and macOS devices. This will put pressure on website admins and developers to make sure their certs meet Apple's requirements – or risk breaking pages on a billion-plus devices and computers.
[...] Shortening the lifespan of certificates does come with some drawbacks. It has been noted that by increasing the frequency of certificate replacements, Apple and others are also making life a little more complicated for site owners and businesses that have to manage the certificates and compliance.
"Companies need to look to automation to assist with certificate deployment, renewal, and lifecycle management to reduce human overhead and the risk of error as the frequency of certificate replacement increase," Callan told us.
We note Let's Encrypt issues free HTTPS certificates that expire after 90 days, and provides tools to automate renewals, so those will be just fine – and they are used all over the web now. El Reg's cert is a year-long affair so we'll be OK.
GitHub.com uses a two-year certificate, which would fall foul of Apple's rules though it was issued before the cut-off deadline. However, it is due to be renewed by June, so there's plenty of opportunity to sort that out. Apple's website has a year-long HTTPS cert that needs renewing in October.
Microsoft is an interesting one: its dot-com's cert is a two-year affair, which expires in October. If Redmond renews it for another two years, it'll trip up over Safari's policy.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday February 25 2020, @12:24AM (3 children)
Now, years later, frequently rotating passwords are no longer recommended. It turns out you were just as likely to change your password to something the brute force attack was going to guess next as you were to change away from the unfortunate (for you) next guess.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Tuesday February 25 2020, @12:59AM (2 children)
It still purges persistent unauthorized access. (e.g. the you gave your password to your assistant one time in an emergency or you got phished/MITMd that one time you used an insecure wifi hotspot and don't know) and years later they still have access...
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday February 25 2020, @01:16AM
It does, but the interval for that can be somewhat longer to avoid people writing their password on a post-it under their keyboard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @02:17PM
Yup, the APT is the ONLY thing that password changes affect.
This is why it likely isn't worth it for most things that are susceptible to smash and grab attacks.