Planned obsolescence is a characteristic of many technological developments to which we have unfortunately become accustomed in multiple commercial sectors, with equipment that breaks completely, which partially stop working or they lose certain functionalities and options that once encouraged us to buy them.
Devices for the smart home, computers, televisions, web browsers and other connected equipment are no exception, with configuration changes that often limit their usability.
The last example comes from Let’s Encrypt, a non-profit organization that is dedicated to issuing HTTPS root certificates with which our teams are able to encrypt connections when accessing the Web and certain online services.
But in a few days there will be a major change that could cause access problems for some users as of September 30, 2021.
The reason is simple: September 30 IdentTrust DST Root CA X3 certificate expires, a software that many computers and multimedia equipment have installed in their operating system to access web browsing, requiring another equivalent and updated system on our devices that performs this function if we do not want to be unable to access services on the Internet.
In theory it shouldn’t be a problem, as long as we have our software updated. However, since this type of certificate is usually installed with the launch of the equipment and used for years, it may be that if you have a very old device that you have not updated in recent years, stay unable to access the internet. As we can read on the Let’s Encrypt page itself:
After September 30, 2021, only platforms that use ISRG Root X1 (and not DST Root CA X3, which is the one that will be obsolete) will be able to continue validating Let’s Encrypt certificates
On the web we can also find a list with the platforms that meet these requirements, supporting the most modern version ISRG Root X1, so in theory if we have one of these devices and we have its updated operating system, we should not have problems:
- Windows> = XP SP3
- macOS> = 10.12.1
- iOS> = 10 (iOS 9 did not include it)
- iPhone 5 and above can be updated to iOS 10 to be compatible
- Android> = 7.1.1 (although Android> = 2.3.6 will still work in some cases)
- Mozilla Firefox> = 50.0
- Ubuntu> = xenial / 16.04
- Debian> = jessie / 8
- Java 8> = 8u141
- Java 7> = 7u151
- NSS> = 3.26
If, on the other hand, we have a device based on any of these platforms but with an older operating system, it will not meet those requirements and probably from September 30 you will have access problems to web browsing and online services.
However, it will be necessary to wait for this date to arrive to know exactly which computers will be affected by this expiration in the certificate.
Via | Techcrunch
More information | Let’s Encrypt