TLS Server Name Indication Extension and Unrecognized_name
Heavy Pond, Jianfengling National Forest Park, Ledong, Hainan, China It's getting hot that some TLS/HTTPS server failed with "unrecognized_name". For example, the Adobe AIR 3 Code Signing Certificate Problem , the ADT handshake alert , and the jarsigner issue with timestamp.geotrust.com , etc. This entry will discussion some background of the "unrecognized_name" alert, and the TLS Server Name Indication (SNI) extension. Background "Unrecognized_name" is an error alert, define by RFC4366 . In section 4 of RFC4366 : - "unrecognized_name": this alert is sent by servers that receive a server_name extension request, but do not recognize the server name. This message MAY be fatal. And in section 3.1 of of RFC4366 : If the server understood the client hello extension but does not recognize the server name, it SHOULD send an "unrecognized_name" alert (which MAY be fatal). From above sections, we see that "unrecognized