Chrome 49's "clock error" explained

Hello folks, it is your anarchist here.
You may have noticed that a lot of websites on the last version of Chrome that XP supported has a "your clock is ahead" error.
I tried everything that the tutorials have told me, nothing worked.

Well, I dug a bit deeper and found the issue.

Websites such as Steam for example were using something called "DST Root CA X3". This was basically how websites were encrypted before, but this encryption has now expired. Now "Let's Encrypt" has moved onto using a newer script, which of course is not optimized for Chrome 49 and probably never will be.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/30/lets_encrypt_xero_slack_outages/
https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/production-chain-changes/150739

These will explain the situation a lot better than I did here, I just gave you the rundown.

So what's the plan for the future? Well... if the way things are going with Mypal's discontinuation, XP users may have to start packing their bags if they want to continue using the internet.

 

Already packed my bags, I have XP on one old Compaq laptop and it's not my main OS. It's not just browsers but other software and newer hardware that are incompatible with XP. Currently I use Windows 7 & 10. I do have XP in a virtual machine on my main computer but rarely use it anymore.

 

Mm. Notwithstanding the fact that Chrome 49 is now more than 45 releases out-of-date, we're still getting the problem today with Chrome 94! I suspect it's more to do with much of the background network infrastructure running behind the scenes all the time, than the browsers themselves......

Mike.

 

Hi all, just tonight joined this Forum and hit gold at once! Seeking an answer to why I can't access HTTPS sites on my newly XP reinstalled and Chrome 49 browser in place, getting Clock errors every time though my clock is spot on! I tried Opera, same type of error. Found a workaround, wrote a batch file to run chrome.exe --ignore-certificate-errors which lets me get to important sites, but is patently risky! In fact Chrome banners "Stability and security will suffer"!!! The XP, on a Dell Mini, is not my main machine, just used for some stuff eg Zoom. So I may be wasting my time

 

How may this be potentially risky?

 

Security? I'd assumed that certification meant safety - but perhaps not? I was pleased to find a workaround that, er, worked!