Let’s Encrypt comes up with workaround for abandonware Android devices
I have always wondered a bit what is the purpose of expiration dates. For certificates or GPG keys alike. Once they expire it often enough creates some problems. Either because renewal has just been forgotten or because there are some technical issues, like in the Let's Encrypt / Android case.<p>If you have a security incident you can't wait for the expiration date anyway, you need to revoke. And hopefully  users have a mechanism to note the revocation in time.<p>So expiration dates help to avoid using weak algorithms forever. But does that need to be done on a fixed date per certificate? Wouldn't that be a more gradual approach  in the libraries? And of course they are not updated they   get less secure as time goes by. And sooner or later compatibility issues will do the job. E. g. most Nokia Symbian phones don't do https any more, because all they can handle is SHA-1 certificate signatures. That was a gradual decline in functionality.