Google: timeline for distrusting all Symantec Certificates in Chrome
Google published a timeline recently on the Google Security blog which highlights the timeline for dropping support for Symantec-issued certificates in Chrome.
The company plans to drop full support in Chrome 70, but will distrust certificates that were issued before June 1, 2016 as early as March 15, 2018 (Chrome 66).
The core of the issue surrounding Symantec certificates -- the business operates under brand names such as VeriSign, Thawte, Equifac, RapidSSL or GeoTrust -- is that Symantec "entrusted several organizations with the ability to issue certificates without the appropriate or necessary oversight" according to Google.
Symantec was aware of these security deficiencies, and incidents in the past showed just how bad it was. In 2015 for instance, certificates were created covering five organizations including Google and Opera without the knowledge of the organizations involved.
Symantec came to an agreement with DigiCert under which DigiCert will acquire Symantec's website security and PKI solutions business.
Google plans to remove trust from all Symantec-issued certificates in Chrome in the coming year. The company published a timeline that highlights the most important dates of the process.
- October 24, 2017 -- Chrome 62 Stable -- Chrome highlights if a certificate of a site will be distrusted when Chrome 66 gets released.
- December 1, 2017 -- DigiCert's new infrastructure will be "capable of full issuance". Certificates issued by Symantec's old infrastructure from this point forward will cease working in future updates. This won't affect certificates issued by DigiCert.
- March 15, 2018 -- Chrome 66 Beta -- Any Symantec issued certificate before June 1, 2016 is distrusted. Sites won't load but throw a certificate alert instead.
- September 13, 2018 -- Chrome 70 Beta -- Trust in Symantec's old infrastructure is dropped entirely in Google Chrome. This won't affect DigiCert issued certificates, but will block any site that uses old certificates.
Chrome users cannot really do anything about this, as website operators need to switch to a certificate that is still trusted by Google as early as March 14, 2018. The only option that users of the browser have is to let website operators know about certificate issues should they not be aware of this.
Mozilla will match the dates proposed by Google according to a post by Gervase Markham on the Mozilla Dev Security Policy group.
Webmasters who run sites with Symantec certificates need to add new certificates to their web properties before the deadline to ensure continued access to those properties. One option that webmasters have is to use Lets Encrypt which offers free and automated certificates.
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.