{"id":5574,"date":"2017-12-15T14:22:06","date_gmt":"2017-12-15T19:22:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thesslstore.com\/blog\/?p=5574"},"modified":"2021-06-11T15:43:47","modified_gmt":"2021-06-11T19:43:47","slug":"attention-whitehouse-need-re-issue-ssl-certificate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thesslstore.com\/blog\/attention-whitehouse-need-re-issue-ssl-certificate\/","title":{"rendered":"Attention Whitehouse: You Need to Re-Issue Your SSL Certificate"},"content":{"rendered":"

The new website looks great, but just a heads up, you need to reissue your SSL<\/h2>\n

The Trump Administration unveiled the new Whitehouse.gov website on Friday<\/a>. And, ignoring politics for a second, it looks great. It\u2019s been streamlined, cleaned up and it\u2019s going to cost half as much to run as the last one. All good things.<\/p>\n

But, as I was perusing the new layout I did notice one, small, minuscule thing you may want to take care of sooner, rather than later: your SSL certificate needs to be re-issued.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, you should make it a habit to take a gander at a site\u2019s SSL certificate whenever you arrive for the first time, and before purchases. But, I realize that\u2019s a lot like the dentist reminding you to floss \u2013 it\u2019s good hygiene but most of you aren\u2019t going to do it.<\/p>\n

\"Whitehouse<\/p>\n

But I do, and the Whitehouse appears to be using a Symantec OV wildcard certificate that just barely misses the cutoff for distrust. You\u2019re going to need to re-issue your SSL certificate.<\/p>\n

Why does the Whitehouse need to re-issue its SSL certificate?<\/h2>\n

That all comes back to the situation that played out between Google\/Mozilla and Symantec over the Summer<\/a>. We covered it in-depth as it happened, but if you haven\u2019t been following, the abridged version is that Google and Mozilla felt Symantec was doing a poor job of overseeing some of its managed partners, third-party organizations that handle validation in other regions of the world.<\/p>\n

So the companies got together and arrived at a solution<\/a> where Symantec\u2019s old roots, and all the certificates that had been signed off of them, would be distrusted in phases as Symantec rebuilt its PKI. In the interim, Symantec sold its CA operation and all associated assets to DigiCert<\/a> who will be handling validation and issuance on behalf of Symantec.<\/p>\n<\/span>\n

DigiCert<\/a> began issuing for Symantec on December 1, 2017. As a result, any Symantec SSL certificate issued after December 1st<\/sup> is free and clear. Unfortunately, the Whitehouse got its certificate issued 9 days too early, on November 21, 2017.<\/p>\n

\"Whitehouse.gov<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no rush, the Whitehouse has until September 13, 2018. As long as the certificate gets re-issued and installed before then, everything will be fine.<\/p>\n

If not, well, you\u2019ll be able to add Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox<\/a> to the list of people and things that distrust the Whitehouse.<\/p>\n

This could affect you, too!<\/h2>\n

While the Whitehouse\u2019s website serves as a very visible example, it\u2019s far from the only site that will need to re-issue its SSL certificate in the coming weeks and months.<\/p>\n

We will have a much more in-depth article covering all the details tomorrow, but for now here\u2019s the abridged version:<\/p>\n