Re:All extensions disabled due to expiration of intermediate...
by jefftk on Saturday May 04, 2019 @02:45AM
(#19824854)
If it really was only to make money for CAs we'd see LetsEncrypt offering very long lifetime certs. But:
* Very short lifetimes get people to automate, preventing problems where one cert lasts long enough to lose the institutional knowledge around it.
* CRLs don't work. For performance you don't want to check for a revocation in serial with the request, and you don't want to block all browsing if the revocation list server is down. Revoking a cert will cover some users, but lots will still get "https://" and no warnings.
* Very short lifetimes get people to automate, preventing problems where one cert lasts long enough to lose the institutional knowledge around it.
* CRLs don't work. For performance you don't want to check for a revocation in serial with the request, and you don't want to block all browsing if the revocation list server is down. Revoking a cert will cover some users, but lots will still get "https://" and no warnings.