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posted by janrinok on Monday February 24 2020, @07:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the honestly,-it's-for-your-own-good... dept.

Apple drops a bomb on long-life HTTPS certificates: Safari to snub new security certs valid for more than 13 months:

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.


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  • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday February 25 2020, @12:43AM (6 children)

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Tuesday February 25 2020, @12:43AM (#962112) Journal

    This only affects Safari.

    For now. My Netscape [Seamonkey] won't let me past expired certificates sometimes. The option to bypass it just isn't there. I had to use Chrome! The horror!

    --
    La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
  • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday February 25 2020, @12:57AM (2 children)

    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Tuesday February 25 2020, @12:57AM (#962124) Journal
    Use links. No javascript spyware, no css badness. No social media "share with" icons, no emoticons. And you can pipe it through festival if you want to listen instead of read.
    --
    SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday February 25 2020, @03:36PM (1 child)

      by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday February 25 2020, @03:36PM (#962392)

      Links is an open source text and graphic web browser with a pull-down menu system.[3] It renders complex pages, has partial HTML 4.0 support (including tables and frames[4] and support for multiple character sets such as UTF-8), supports color and monochrome terminals and allows horizontal scrolling.

      It is intended for users who want to retain many typical elements of graphical user interfaces (pop-up windows, menus etc.) in a text-only environment.

      Oh great. Because having two different text browsers named "Lynx" and "Links" couldn't possibly backfire.

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
      • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday February 26 2020, @02:17AM

        by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Wednesday February 26 2020, @02:17AM (#962678) Journal
        Links has better layout support than Lynx. But both render soylentnews in "not so great" mode.

        If all the hyperlinks were after (to the right of) the main stories, instead of half on the left and half on the right, there'd be a lot less vertical scrolling to get to the stories.

        --
        SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @09:47PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @09:47PM (#962564)

    At work we have a server with one expired CA .. Chrome refuses to load the page. No option to bypass. Nothing. We're dead in the water until we get a replacement.

    Internet explorer gives a warning with an option to continue. This is far more useful.

    • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday February 25 2020, @09:51PM (1 child)

      by fustakrakich (6150) on Tuesday February 25 2020, @09:51PM (#962567) Journal

      Set the clock back

      --
      La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
      • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Wednesday February 26 2020, @07:59AM

        by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 26 2020, @07:59AM (#962766)

        Where's my Delorean?