On September 30, the IdenTrust DST Root CA X3 digital root certificate from the Let's Encrypt certification authority, which was used on old gadgets, will expire. Those of them who have not received updates all this time may have problems connecting to the Internet, TechCrunch notes.
Let's Encrypt was founded at the end of 2015. It provides free of charge cryptographic certificates for TLS encryption. TLS provides encrypted transmission of data between nodes on a network. If the TLS certificate on the device has expired, then it will not be able to connect to another host.
The problems will affect users of older versions of macOS (10.12.0 and earlier), Windows XP, iOS devices up to iOS 10, PlayStations 3 and 4 with non-updated firmware, Debian 8 and older operating systems, and so on.
Information portal for security SecurityLab writes that after this “millions” of devices may be faced with the inability to access the network.
According to Oleksiy Lukatsky, an independent expert in the field of information security, most users will not have problems with Internet access. They can occur only in those whose devices were purchased 9-10 years ago, Lukatsky commented on this data to RBC. The expert also says that among all Let's Encrypt certificates issued (about 2 billion), 1 million is an extremely small part, which is quite dispersed around the world, so the question of a massive failure and the impossibility of accessing the Internet is somewhat exaggerated.
Let's Encrypt has posted a link on its Twitter to a forum thread created for those who run into problems. “If you encounter an error, check out possible solutions on our community forum,” the message says.
