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Comments on Are certificate errors always reported immediately, or is validation cached?

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Are certificate errors always reported immediately, or is validation cached? Question

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I visited a site that I use infrequently and got a certificate error, specifically NET:ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID. I contacted the owner, who asked for a screenshot. That surprised me, as I had assumed that a certificate problem would be visible to everyone. I tested three browsers across two devices and saw the same problem everywhere -- but I also hadn't visited this site recently from any of them. The owner presumably visits it a lot.

Is certificate validation cached client-side? If so, for how long, and how can a user flush or bypass it?

I can think of two reasons to want to flush such a cache and force a recheck. One is if I'm the owner of the site and want to check that everything's ok (the situation that prompted this question). The other is if I'm a cautious user who wants to double-check that, say, my bank doesn't have security issues before I log in -- a scenario that hadn't occurred to me before seeing this error that a site owner doesn't see.

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2 comment threads

Certificate chain error visibility (1 comment)
CA Invalid? O_o (2 comments)
Certificate chain error visibility
Canina‭ wrote 3 months ago

Not an answer, but:

It's not necessarily so that a certificate chain problem will be equally visible to everyone.

If a site is fronted by a content delivery network, they are likely to do TLS termination. The backend connection between them and the actual servers may then be HTTP or HTTPS, and if HTTPS almost certainly won't be affected by any issues displayed in your browser.

Your (or the site owner's) ISP, public WiFi network, workplace (probably the most common), VPN provider or even country might be doing TLS interception and termination. If this happens then the certificate seen by your browser is likely to be different from that seen by the site owner.

Providing information on the leaf certificate (as seen by your browser) -- at least its serial number, validity period and fingerprint values -- will allow the site owner to confirm whether the certificate you're seeing is the same one they're seeing and/or the same one they expect visitors to see.