Wildcard Certificate Limitations

TODO: collapasable, copyable, download, etc

What technical limitations can you hit if you choose to use a wildcard certificate for sub-domainsUsing a wildcard certificate for sub-domains offers flexibility and convenience, but it also comes with some technical limitations and potential challenges:

1. Security Risks: If the wildcard certificate's private key is compromised, all sub-domains are at risk. This is because a single key is used for all sub-domains under the wildcard, making it a single point of failure.

2. Limited Scope: Wildcard certificates only cover one level of sub-domains. For example, a certificate for *.example.com will secure sub.example.com but not sub.sub.example.com.

3. Complexity in Management: Managing a single wildcard certificate for multiple sub-domains can become complex, especially in large organizations. If you need to revoke the certificate, all sub-domains will be affected, requiring reconfiguration and re-deployment.

4. Compatibility Issues: Some older devices or systems might not fully support wildcard certificates, leading to compatibility issues.

5. Cost: While a wildcard certificate can be more cost-effective than purchasing individual certificates for each sub-domain, they tend to be more expensive than a single domain certificate.

6. Performance Overhead: For some use cases, particularly where each sub-domain is served from a different server, a single wildcard certificate might cause performance overhead in terms of SSL/TLS handshake times.

7. Extended Validation (EV) and Organization Validation (OV) Limitations: Extended Validation (EV) and some Organization Validation (OV) certificates cannot be issued as wildcard certificates. This means that if you require the highest level of trust and validation for your sub-domains, you may need to use individual certificates.

8. Certificate Transparency Logging: While this is not a limitation of the wildcard certificate itself, it is important to consider certificate transparency logging, which can expose all sub-domains to public scrutiny. This might be a concern for security or privacy reasons.

In summary, while wildcard certificates can simplify the process of securing multiple sub-domains, they also introduce some security, management, and compatibility challenges that need to be carefully considered.

Wildcard Certificate Limitations created at Tue Jan 20 1970 20:36:43 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)