Smart phones computers, tablets, but also game consoles and televisions … Internet it is everywhere and for years. But nevertheless, on September 30, 2021, millions of devices could be deprived of connection! A giant “blackout” that could affect a large number of devices designed before 2017. Why? Because this September 30, 2021, a certificate Digital security will expire, and at the same time, the absence of an update will block another certificate, more widespread, essential today to connect to the Internet, and for example watch videos, or check emails.

The culprit is the certificate IdentTrust DST root CA X3, and this is what allows the ISRG Root X1 file to be certified, essential today to encrypt Internet connections. According to Scott helme, the researcher at the origin of this discovery, all early smartphones, Connected TVs or game consoles that have not been updated will no longer have access to certain Internet services.

All affected operating systems

In his article, he gives many examples, and these are iPhone under iOS 9, smartphones under Android 2.3.5 and earlier or even personal computer with the Windows XP Service Pack 2 or computers Apple on macOS 10.12.0. This also affects consoles such as PS3 or the PS4, or devices with Ubuntu and Blackberry. The full list is at this page.

To anticipate this possible outage, two solutions: upgrade your device; install a recent version of the browser Firefox because it does not use this security certificate and therefore allows you to connect to the Internet without fear of an interruption.