An SSL certificate is a digital “passport” of a website: it confirms the authenticity of the resource, enables HTTPS, encrypts traffic, and is responsible for the lock icon in the address bar. If a certificate is revoked, browsers like Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge may display a warning about an insecure connection or block access altogether.
“In the worst case, the sites and online services from which they are revoked may be unavailable for a short time while the owners receive new certificates,” explained a representative of the Russian Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Communications.
The reason was the new rules of the international consortium CA/Browser Forum, which includes the largest certification authorities and browser developers. Now checking companies against the sanctions lists of OFAC, BIS and European analogues has become mandatory. GlobalSign is part of the Japanese GMO Internet Group, and due to European regulation, the company is required to take into account sanctions restrictions.
Experts assess the scale of the risk differently. According to open sources, GlobalSign’s share in Runet does not exceed 5%, however, Deputy General Director of Astra Cloud Konstantin Anisimov said that in the commercial segment of Western certificates in Russia GlobalSign occupies about 90%. One of RBC’s interlocutors estimated the list for revocation at approximately 15–20 thousand second-level domains, but taking into account subdomains, the real number of affected certificates could be much higher.
