Government shutdown: TLS certificates not renewed, many websites are down

Post by untog » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 2:24 PM UTC

nostrebored wrote: post #18

bartread wrote: post #17

Serious question for US members of HN: how do you tolerate these shutdowns? I mean, apart from the loss of services, including websites, it seems like many federal workers aren't being paid. Will they be paid back after the shutdown impasse is resolved or is the money they didn't/couldn't earn lost to them. This seems unfair and, in the meantime, how are they supposed to go about their lives? Overall it seems potenti…

Government employees are paid, but contract workers like janitors are not

Post by baddox » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 2:27 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #8

aboutruby wrote: post #2

From reddit: > This article is overly hyperbolic. Some obscure subdomains of government websites are serving expired x509 certificates. They're not down and this definitely doesn't compromise the encryption that protects any login credentials. Anyway, it is embarassing to see certificate renewal is not automated - it's something any good sysadmin would have set up. https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/aeps41/…

Nothing to do with SSL, but a fair amount of US government websites are hard down, on purpose, due to the funding dilemma. Like: https://www.data.gov "Due to a lapse in government funding all Data.gov websites will be unavailable until further notice." Which is pretty odd, because putting up these blocker pages probably costs more than just letting the sites run unattended.

Post by rplst8 » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 2:31 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #23

tyingq wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing to do with SSL, but a fair amount of US government websites are hard down, on purpose, due to the funding dilemma. Like: https://www.data.gov "Due to a lapse in government funding all Data.gov websites will be unavailable until further notice." Which is pretty odd, because putting up these blocker pages probably costs more than just letting the sites run unattended.

Government departments are legally required to budget for the possibility of a shutdown, which means they have to keep the money around that they will use to shut down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antideficiency_Act

Post by dtech » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 2:32 PM UTC

TomK32 wrote: post #19

tossaccount123 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump is asking for less than 1/1000 of our annual budget for border security. We spend 10x that on foreign aid annually. This entire thing is political BS over what amounts to a rounding error while congress almost unanimously approved $38 billion in money for Israel

As a European I find the US system to bind packages of laws slightly idiotic. The current fight is about a few sticks of steel yet unrelated federal agencies are cut off their funding. This is sabotage!

Post by untog » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #8

aboutruby wrote: post #2

From reddit: > This article is overly hyperbolic. Some obscure subdomains of government websites are serving expired x509 certificates. They're not down and this definitely doesn't compromise the encryption that protects any login credentials. Anyway, it is embarassing to see certificate renewal is not automated - it's something any good sysadmin would have set up. https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/aeps41/…

Nothing to do with SSL, but a fair amount of US government websites are hard down, on purpose, due to the funding dilemma. Like: https://www.data.gov "Due to a lapse in government funding all Data.gov websites will be unavailable until further notice." Which is pretty odd, because putting up these blocker pages probably costs more than just letting the sites run unattended.