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I'm trying to understand the implications of private key leakage (due to Heartbleed) from a website that uses a wildcard certificate.

If an organization has a wildcard certificate (valid for *.domain.tld), does it mean that all sites that use this certificate will have to share the same private key?

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    They MAY use the same certificate for any *.domain.tld. However, the problem with bugs like heartbleed is that, in case you get hold of the private part of the certificate you are able to intercept (read / modify) any *.domain.tld HTTPS traffic and it doesn't really matter what the originally used certificate is (unless HPKP is enforced).
    – bayo
    May 31, 2016 at 8:45
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    @bayo15 You should post this as an answer.
    – techraf
    May 31, 2016 at 10:30

1 Answer 1

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They MAY use the same certificate for any *.domain.tld. However, the problem with bugs like heartbleed is that, in case you get hold of the private part of the certificate you are able to intercept (read / modify) any *.domain.tld SSL/TLS traffic and it doesn't really matter what the originally used certificate is (unless HPKP is enforced).

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