On Thu, Jun 05, 2008, Chris Kottaridis wrote:

> When trying to make a certificate for 30 years seems you run into the
> 2038 date limitation. Seems the code converts date to a signed int in
> seconds since 1970 and now that we are within 30 years of the 2038 limit
> we get hit by it. Using a date of (30 * 365) from now:
> 
> notBefore=Mar25 19:33:38 2008 GMT
> notAfter=Feb 10 13:05:22 1902 GMT
> 
> Clearly it wrapped around and subtracted 68 years from 1970 instead of
> adding 68 years.
> 
> Is there a plan to remove this limitation ?
> 
> I am seeing this on openssl-0.9.7m.
> 

As has been mentioned this is caused by the time representation of the
underlying OS. OpenSSL relies on the OS routines to convert the time_t value
to appropriate date fields. If the time_t value wraps around you get the above
behaviour.

Changing this is would involve including independent date routines which don't
have this restriction. I did start on this some time ago but other higher
priority tasks (e.g. paid ones!) took over.

Note however that this doesn't affect OpenSSLs ability to *verify* date fields
in the far future. The technique used avoids time_t issues and it should
happily handle any date.

Steve.
--
Dr Stephen N. Henson. Email, S/MIME and PGP keys: see homepage
OpenSSL project core developer and freelance consultant.
Homepage: http://www.drh-consultancy.demon.co.uk
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