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Name constraints are an optional feature in the standards. A client can ignore the constraints and be completely standards compliant.

Should the CAs issue intermediate certs that are only secure if a client implements an optional feature?

And even if most web browsers support name constraints properly - who knows if that cheap network webcam does, or that old mail client, or that 20 year old retro PC game?

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This isn’t strictly true.

If you want to uphold the name constraints in your CA cert, mark the field as critical. At that point clients that don’t understand them should fail validation of the CA cert.

So it may have limited use-cases today if you require full compat for all clients. For example internal controlled networks like discussed in the article.

Just like you presumably already wouldn't issue LE certs when you need to support clients with ancient CA bundles.

How do you think TLSv1.3 ever got rolled out?

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