Wildcard SSL on sub-subdomain

user_137786 0
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We have a wildcard SSL certificate for *.domain.example, and have a website with sub1.sub2.domain.example.

Safari 4.0.4 on macOS pops up a certificate error(presumably because of wildcard interpretation), while Safari 4 on Windows does not.

Also IE8 behavior is mixed at best, some IE8 display the certificate error and some do not.

What causes this strange behavior on Safari and IE?

wildcard-subdomain ssl-certificate
3 Answers

A wildcard SSL certificate for *.example.net will match sub.example.net but not sub.sub.example.net.

From RFC 2818:

Matching is performed using the matching rules specified by RFC2459. If more than one identity of a given type is present in the certificate (e.g., more than one dNSName name, a match in any one of the set is considered acceptable.) Names may contain the wildcard character * which is considered to match any single domain name component or component fragment. E.g., *.a.example matches foo.a.example but not bar.foo.a.example. f*.example matches foo.example but not bar.example.

user_12748380
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