Multiple SSL certificates for a single domain on different servers

ssl-certificate

Our website is hosted by hosting company HA under domain D on a shared hosting plan. I would like to switch our hosting provider to company HB and I am willing to purchase a new SSL certificate for that purpose. I explicitly do not want to migrate the existing certificate, because I do not have access to the server on HA.

My question is if both HA and HB can simultaneously each have an independent certificate for the same domain D installed?

If so, will the new site work seamlessly under SSL as soon as I switch the domain over to HB or do I have to "unregsiter" the certificate on HA somehow before I can install a new one on HB?

Best Answer

With bog-standard SSL, this is fine. HA provides the old certificate, validly-signed, and clients using the old A record from the DNS and connecting to that server will continue to accept it. HB will provide the new certificate, and clients getting the new A record will connect to it and accept the new certificate. They can peacefully co-exist.

That said, there are some extensions to SSL that may make this more tricky. Browser plugins like Certificate Patrol, which cache SSL certificates, will flag up the change, and if the client is unlucky enough to get the old record after having validated the new one (perhaps a user will move a laptop from work (old DNS) to a cybercafe (new DNS), then back to work), the plugin will grumble.

I have a recollection of another distributed system that allowed multiple users to avoid MITM certification attacks by pooling the many client views of the certificate seen at any given server. Whilst I can't find a reference to it right now, this would most definitely cause problems with your scenario.

But these aren't hugely common yet, so you'll probably be OK.

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