14 DAY TRIAL // Apple today announced that the certificate used to sign numerous updates for OS X Lion and Snow Leopard is set to expire tomorrow. The company plans to release modified versions of OS X Lion and Snow Leopard Server.
A support document posted online by the Mac makers today informs Server administrators that “The certificate used by Apple to sign many updates for OS X Lion and Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard expires on March 23, 2012.”
Admins who are managing their own Software Update servers are instructed to “remove all updates signed with the expired certificates and redownload the updates from Apple.”
The Cupertino, Calif. tech giant explains that certificates are used to sign both automatic software updates for Lion and Snow Leopard.
This ensures that the bits have not been altered prior or during the download.
“All cryptographic certificates have an expiration date, and the certificate used to sign previous updates expires on March 23, 2012,” the company stresses.
Apple promises to repost all current automatic updates at a later date, adding that “They will be identical to the previous updates except that they will be signed by a new certificate that expires in 2019.”
Admins will be required to remove the older updates and download the new ones manually, the tech note says.
There’s also a bit of a warning included: “If you do not remove the older updates, you may see two copies of some updates in Server Admin, your users may see the message ‘The update could not be verified’ when trying to install a software update, and you will use up to twice as much disk space to store software updates.”
The knowledge base article continues with instructions on how to remove the older updates, as well as an important note for administrators who have "Delete outdated software updates" unchecked.
The basic idea is that apple will only repost the updates that are current at the time of the certificate expiration, meaning only the latest increment of each major OS X iteration will be made available (i.e. OS X Lion 10.7.3, or OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8).