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List:       apache-modssl
Subject:    Expired certificates
From:       John.Airey () rnib ! org ! uk
Date:       2001-07-25 15:52:17
[Download RAW message or body]

I've just made an interesting discovery after suffering the ignomy of having
an SSL certificate expire. (Supposedly I'll have it within the next two
hours. A late night for me!)

It appears from my testing that the expiry time on a certificate is taken
from the client's machine time, not the server time. I've tested this with
IE 5.01 SP1 and Netscape 4.77.

Therefore the moral is to ensure that you renew all certificates before the
time on the certificate is reached anywhere in the world, to prevent browser
warnings. In practical terms this would mean renewing before the last 24
hours of the certificate is reached. As far as I am aware this is not
documented anywhere. (No doubt some clever person will point me to the RFC
where this is).

I believe I'll have some accurate information about self-signed starred
certificates with IIS fairly soon also.

- 
John Airey
Internet Systems Support Officer, ITCSD, Royal National Institute for the
Blind,
Bakewell Road, Peterborough PE2 6XU,
Tel.: +44 (0) 1733 375299 Fax: +44 (0) 1733 370848 John.Airey@rnib.org.uk 

- 

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