Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) subsidiary Google has taken the same route taken by Mozilla and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in distrusting WoSign certificates.
Google is now the third firm to avoid using certificates from the Chinese company. Google had expected to stop using certificates once Chrome version 56 is released in January 2017. The company stated in a blog post that the certificates issued before October 21 would be trusted only if they were in line with the Certificate Transparency policy applied in Chrome. The other criteria allowing their users were if the domain using the credentials is part of a list of domains that are clients of both.
“Due to a number of technical limitations and concerns, Google Chrome is unable to trust all pre-existing certificates while ensuring our users are sufficiently protected from further misissuance,” stated Chrome security executive Andrew Whalley.
Whalley also pointed out that the certificates from StartCom and WoSign will not work in Chrome 56 due to the new changes. Just a week ago, Mozilla announced that it was also planning to ban the new certificates from StartCom and WoSign once Firefox 51 is launched early next year. Mozilla provided a huge list of problems with WoSign such as certificates being backdated so that they can avoid having certificates blocked by browsers. This refers to certificates that use the SHA-1 algorithm which is considered outdated.
Google has announced that all publicly trusted websites will have to align with the requirements of Chrome’s Certificate Transparency policy so that they can be trusted by Google Chrome. Google developed Certificate Transparency as an open-source framework that is used to audit and monitor website certificates. It was later adopted as an IETF open standard that can be adopted by all browsers.
Google has previously flagged numerous certificate authorities for going rogue in the past. The new changes highlight the fact that the company is taking on a more aggressive stance towards Certificate Transparency.
Alphabet stock closed the latest trading session at $809.90.