Knowledge Base

Description

DigiCert replaced multiple intermediate CA certificates (ICAs).

We replaced ICAs to:

• Promote agility with ICA replacement.
• Reduce the likelihood of pinning ICA certificates or hard coding ICA certificate trust, which makes replacing these certificates difficult.
• Reduce the scope of certificate issuance from any given ICA to mitigate the impact of changes in industry and CA/Browser Forum guidelines for intermediate and end-entity certificates.

What are ICA certificates used for?

Certificate Authorities (CAs) use intermediate CA (ICA) certificates to issue certificates such as your SSL/TLS certificates. The ICA certificate links your certificate to the trusted root certificate enabling browsers and other applications to trust it.

How do new ICA certificates affect me?

No action is required, unless you do any of the following:

• Pin the old versions of replaced intermediate CA certificates
• Hard code the acceptance of the old versions of replaced intermediate CA certificates
• Operate a trust store that includes the old versions of replaced intermediate CA certificates

If you do any of the above, we recommend updating your environment as soon as possible. Stop pinning and hard coding ICA certificate acceptance or make the necessary changes to ensure certificates issued from the new ICA certificates are trusted (in other words, can chain up to their ICA and trusted root certificates).

How does ICA replacement affect existing certificates?

Rolling out new ICA certificates does not affect existing certificates. We don't remove an old ICA from certificate stores until all the certificates issued from it have expired. This means active certificates issued from a replaced ICA certificate continue to be trusted.

However, it does affect those certificates if you reissue them, as the reissued certificate is issued from the new ICA certificate. This means you will need to include the provided ICA certificate when you install the reissued certificate.

Best practice

We recommend that you always include the provided ICA with every certificate you install. This has always been the recommended best practice to ensure ICA certificate replacements go unnoticed and to make sure certificates are trusted.

Intermediate CA certificate replacements

To download copies of intermediate CA and root certificates, see the DigiCert Trusted Root Authority Certificates page. This is an active page that we update as roots and intermediate CA certificates become publicly available.

May 2022 DV ICA Replacements

DigiCert will replace the ICAs listed below on May 24, 2022. We encourage you to update key stores, code bases, and certificate pinnings that may be in use. 

December 2021 client certificate ICA replacements

DigiCert replaced the ICAs listed below on December 7, 2021. This change was made to remain compliant with industry standards for client certificates.

We encourage you to update key stores, code bases, and certificate pinnings that may be in use. 

June 2021 EV and OV ICA Replacements

DigiCert replaced the ICAs listed below on June 9, 2021.

We encourage you to update key stores, code bases, and certificate pinnings that may be in use. Customers impacted by these ICA changes, such as those utilizing ca_cert_id parameter, should contact their account manager or our support teams to explore options. 

This change was made to restore compatibility with Google Chrome’s EV indicators.

The new ICAs have the same Subject Name and key pair. Customers pinning to either of these values do not need to make any changes. Customers pinning to any other field, such as certificate serial number must update their pinning configuration immediately. Note that DigiCert does not recommend pinning because of operational risks.

November 2020 ICA Replacements

DigiCert replaced the ICAs listed below on November 2, 2020.
We encourage you to update key stores, needed code, and certificate pinnings that may be in use.