Older Android phones will not support many secure websites in 2021


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Photo: Oliver Douliari (Getty Images)

If you’re doomsday scrolling through News feeds on older Android phones, it may be time to upgrade. One of the world’s top certification authorities warns that phones running Android versions of Nougat before 7.1.1 will be cut off from large parts of the secure web starting in 2021, Android Police Reported on Saturday.

Mozilla-partner non-profit let’s encrypt Said its partnership with fellow certification officer Aiden Trust will expire in September. 1, 2021. It has no plans to renew its cross-signing agreement, let alone encrypt Identrust’s root certificate starting January 11, default cross-signing for DST Route X3, while the organization will make full use of its own ISRG Route X1 route. Proceed to. .

That’s a pretty significant shift considering that As much as one third All web domains rely on organization certificates. But older software won’t trust Encrypt’s root certificate, so this could “present some compatibility issues,” said lead developer Jacob Hoffman-Andrews. A blog post Friday.

“Some software that hasn’t been updated since 2016 (almost when our original was adopted in many root programs) still doesn’t trust our root certificate, ISRG Root X1,” he said. “Most notably, this includes versions of Android prior to 7.1.1. This means that those older versions of Android will no longer rely on the credentials provided by Encrypt. ”

Installing Firefox is the only task for these users as it relies on its own certificate store which contains the roots of Let’s Encrypt, although it will not ensure the functionality of breaking programs outside of your browser.

Let Encrypt note that about 34% of Android devices are running versions older than 7.1, based on data from Google’s Android development suite. It translates to millions of potential users being cut off from large parts of the secure web starting in 2021. In short, if you’re in someone’s sight New phones This holiday season, if you save yourself a headache later, is perfect for splurges.

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