(credit: Sean MacEntee)
Microsoft plans to retire support for TLS certificates signed by the SHA1 hashing algorithm in the next four months, an acceleration brought on by new research showing it was even more prone to cryptographic collisions than previously thought.
The software maker hinted at the expedited deprecation in November. Last week, it made those plans official. Sometime this summer (for those in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway) the general release versions of Microsoft's Edge and Internet Explorer browsers will stop displaying the address bar lock when visiting HTTPS sites protected by SHA1 certificates. The change will occur even sooner for upcoming Windows Insider Preview builds, which are mostly used by developers for testing purposes.
"This update will be delivered to Microsoft Edge on Windows 10 and Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, and will only impact certificates that chain to a CA in the Microsoft Trusted Root Certificate program," officials in the Microsoft Edge Team wrote. "Both Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer 11 will provide additional details in the F12 Developer Tools console to assist site administrators and developers."