Google Internet Authority G2 has become untrusted due to an expired certificate

Pierluigi Paganini April 05, 2015

Gmail and Google Apps have noticed on Saturday that the Google Internet Authority G2 has become untrusted due to an expired digital certificate.

On Saturday April 4, the Google Internet Certificate Authority G2 has become untrusted due to an expired digital certificate in the chain of trust. The Google Internet Authority G2 is an essential component of the Google PKI infrastructure, it issues digital certificates for company websites and properties.

In the following image posted by securityweek.com there is the result of a check by online service SSL Shopper run on Saturday.

Google Internet Authority G2 expired

The Google Internet Authority G2 is signed by the GeoTrust Global CA and the company informed users that it is aware of the problem, but it hasn’t provided any details on the problem:

“We’re aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a majority of users. The affected users are able to access Gmail, but are seeing error messages and/or other unexpected behavior,” states the Gmail status page Saturday afternoon.

When users’ email client (i.e. Microsoft Outlook) attempted to connect to smtp.google.com they received security warnings.

“This Certificate has an Invalid Issuer,” is the messagge displayed to the users.

Google immediately started the operation to fix the problem, at 3:46PM the issue has been resolved.

“The problem with Gmail should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better,” states the update issued from Google.

The Google Internet Authority G2 is now set to expire on Dec. 31, 2016.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs –  Google Internet Authority G2, PKI)



you might also like

leave a comment