Tracing Soon-to-Expire Federal .gov Certificates with CT Monitors

What this post added

This post highlights a critical aspect of website security by detailing how Cloudflare leverages its Certificate Transparency (CT) monitor, Merkle Town, to identify and track soon-to-expire and expired TLS certificates on .gov websites. It emphasizes the importance of automated certificate renewal and the role of CT logs and monitors in ensuring the integrity and trustworthiness of secure connections, especially during unexpected events like government shutdowns. The post also details technical challenges and unexpected misconfigurations found during the analysis.