Let’s Encrypt discovers CAA bug

Let’s Encrypt announced that it had discovered a bug in its CAA (Certification Authority Authorization) code.

The bug opens up a window of time in which a certificate might be issued even if a CAA record in that domain’s DNS should prohibit it.

As a result, Let’s encrypt is taking security and safety first rather than convenience and it’s going to revoke any currently issued certificate as it can’t be certain which ones are legitimate, the following announcement was made

Unfortunately, this means we need to revoke the certificates that were affected by this bug, which includes one or more of your certificates. To avoid disruption, you’ll need to renew and replace your affected certificate(s) by Wednesday, March 4, 2020. We sincerely apologize for the issue.

If you’re not able to renew your certificate by March 4, the date we are required to revoke these certificates, visitors to your site will see security warnings until you do renew the certificate.

Let’s Encrypt uses Certificate Authority software called Boulder. Typically, a Web server that services many separate domain names and uses Let’s Encrypt to secure them receives a single LE certificate that covers all domain names used by the server rather than a separate cert for each individual domain.

The bug LE discovered is that, rather than checking each domain name separately for valid CAA records authorizing that domain to be renewed by that server, Boulder would check a single one of the domains on that server n times (where n is the number of LE-serviced domains on that server). Let’s Encrypt typically considers domain validation results good for 30 days from the time of validation—but CAA records specifically must be checked no more than eight hours prior to certificate issuance.

P.S. If you need an alternative solution you can always order one of our COMODO SSL’s, GOZEN HOST manage to get the best prices for all of you!!!