Let’s Encrypt will be reducing the validity period of the certificates we issue. We currently issue certificates valid for 90 days, which will be cut in half to 45 days by 2028. This change is being made along with the rest of the industry, as required by the CA/Browser Forum Baseline Requirements, which set the technical requirements that we must follow. All publicly-trusted Certificate Authorities like Let’s Encrypt will be making similar changes. Reducing how long certificates are valid for helps improve the security of the internet, by limiting the scope of compromise, and making certificate revocation technologies more efficient.

Let’s Encrypt will be reducing the validity period of the certificates we issue. We currently issue certificates valid for 90 days, which will be cut in half to 45 days by 2028.
This change is being made along with the rest of the industry, as required by the CA/Browser Forum Baseline Requirements, which set the technical requirements that we must follow. All publicly-trusted Certificate Authorities like Let’s Encrypt will be making similar changes. Reducing how long certificates are valid for helps improve the security of the internet, by limiting the scope of compromise, and making certificate revocation technologies more efficient.

  • itsame@lemmy.worldEnglish
    301·
    10 hours ago

    Reducing the validity timespan will not solve the problem, it only reduces the risk. And how big is that risk really? I’m an amateur and would love to see some real malicious case descriptions that would have been avoided had the certificate been revoked earlier…

    Anybody have some pointers?

    • groet@feddit.orgEnglish
      5·
      2 hours ago

      Terminology: revoked means the issuer of the certificate has decided that the certificate should not be trusted anymore even though it is still valid.

      If a attacker gets access to a certificates key, they can impersonate the server until the validity period of the cert runs out or it is revoked by the CA. However … revocation doesn’t work. The revocation lists arent checked by most clients so a stolen cert will be accepted potentially for a very long time.

      The second argument for shorter certs is adoption of new technology so certs with bad cryptographic algorithms are circled out quicker.

      And third argument is: if the validity is so short you don’t want to change the certs manually and automate the process, you can never forget and let your certs expire.

      We will probably get to a point of single day certs or even one cert per connection eventually and every step will be saver than before (until we get to single use certs which will probably fuck over privacy)

    • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.caEnglish
      2·
      6 hours ago

      It really just helps in cases where you get hacked, but the hacker doesn’t have continued access. Say someone physically penetrates into your building, grabs the key through an unlocked station, and leaves.

      That being said, like you mentioned, if someone is going through this effort, 45 days vs 90 days likely won’t matter. They’ll probably have the data they need after a week anyways.

      Encryption key theft really requires a secondary attack afterwards to get the encrypted data by getting into the middle and either decrypting or redirecting traffic. It’s very much a state level/high-corporate attack, not some random group trying to make a few bucks.