Why naming is important — The case of SSL Revoke

Illustration by Mudassar Iqbal

Our modern browsers enforce HTTPS. Doing so the level of Man-In-The-Middle attacks by rogue entities (hackers, states, corporations) is decimated. This surely is a victory for our privacy and in some cases it can even save lives.

By forcing the content creators and site owners to obtain SSL certificates for their servers so they would not have to explain why Chrome (or others) are marking their site as potentially dangerous in bright red colors they had to turn to hosting companies and their IT departments and approve the necessary expenditures for the certificates. In the mean time, EFF and the sponsors have stepped in to save all budget conscious micro-sites, mostly personal blogs, static sites, development environments with their Let’s Encrypt free SSL offering. You trade in one hour of your tech support to set up the solution for the price of the certificate.

But sometimes, especially for businesses, commercial certificate is the way to go. It makes the site more trustworthy and it might mandatory if you handle payments on your site.

Scenario

A lazy afternoon, one of your clients writes a panicky email. They forgot to renew the certificate, asking you if you can help them. Sure, you jump in, load the admin screen of the certificate provider look at the options, choose one. In…