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0 pointsblagie1y ago0 comments

It depends on the system design. If I have an organization like Google, with many employees, *.google.com would be a horrible cert.

That's not every organization.

I maintain many groups of /related/ servers (including dynamic ones which appear and disappear at whim). There, a wildcard makes a lot of sense. If I have https://[username].[domain]/, https://[git project].[domain]/, https://[client].[domain]/ or similar, that integrates nicely with a lot of security infrastructure in ways which http://[domain]/client/ don't.

E.g. A network can filter https based on domains, but can't look inside the envelope. A browser will highlight domains to users who want to know where they are. Etc.

There are also many good reasons why managing one credential per server (which can map to many domains) is better practice than managing a dizzying array of credentials.

So I agree about the general best practice, but there are exceptions. Mandating (as opposed to recommending / encouraging) non-universal best practices is usually bad practice.

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freedomben1y ago

Yes, I could not agree more. I've been in both the dynamic servers and the dizzying array situations and those are absolutely good reasons to use a wildcard. I worked for a company that white-labelled services so every customer had a vanity subdomain, and managing certs because an utter nightmare until we finally just bought a wildcard.

Recommending encouraging non-wildcard certs is the optimal strategy. Only thing I would add, is recommending default to non-wildcard and evaluate deviations case by case.

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