US government closure caused a large number of government websites to expire HTTPS certificates

Recently, the US Democratic Party and Trump have been deadlocked on the Mexican border wall. This issue has also affected the budget of the government department and caused the US government to close.

Most government departments shut down and the department’s website could not be accessed normally: the digital certificate used by the website was intercepted by the browser.

For example, the US Department of Justice website digital certificate expired as early as the end of last year but has not been replaced until now, so all major browsers are inaccessible.

The pit is that the site also uses the HSTS strict transport protocol to force the browser to load using HTTPS, which makes it impossible for users to ignore certificate errors.

The US government department’s website uses certificates issued by GlobalSign. The Managing Director of GlobalSign stated that even if the company has the heart to solve this problem, the certificate still needs to be replaced manually by government staff.

Expired certificates cannot be replaced directly by renewing, so users will not be able to access these sites until the US government resumes operations.

GlobalSign also reminds some users that they should not do this even if they can ignore the browser warning to continue access, because they may be attacked by hijacking.

Via: bleepingcomputer