SwissSign root CARL published without required reasonCode for revoked subordinate CA certificate
SwissSign reported that a CARL issued by the offline root "SwissSign Gold CA - G2" contained a revocation entry for the subordinate CA certificate "SwissSign Personal Gold CA 2014 - G22" without a reasonCode. The incident was caused by a revocation script that allowed an omitted reason code, which resulted in "unspecified" being used when the subordinate CA was revoked. SwissSign said the affected entry was published in the CARL, but the subordinate CA certificate remains revoked and issuance was not affected. The company stated that the issue was identified on 2026-10-06 after an external third party filed a problem report, and it confirmed the problem the next day. SwissSign also said the old hierarchy is being transitioned to newer single-purpose hierarchies and that the incident is contained because root CARLs are only issued in manual ceremonies. The bug remains ASSIGNED.
- SwissSign revoked the subordinate CA certificate "SwissSign Personal Gold CA 2014 - G22" and the resulting CARL entry was signed by the offline root without a reasonCode.
- The CARL was published with the non-compliant revocation entry.
- An external third party reported the problem to SwissSign.
- SwissSign confirmed the problem to the external third party.
- SwissSign posted a preliminary incident report.
- SwissSign posted the full incident report.
- SwissSign AG — Roman Fischer opened the bug with a preliminary incident report describing the missing reasonCode in the root CARL.
- SwissSign AG — SwissSign posted the full incident report, explained the script error, and gave the timeline and impact details.
- SwissSign AG — An attachment containing the incorrect CARL issued by Gold G2 was added.