Some US government websites won’t load after HTTPS certificates expire during shutdown

In a government shutdown, everything deemed non-essential stops. As we found out, renewing the certificates on its websites is considered non-essential.

Several government sites are currently inaccessible or blocked by most browsers after their HTTPS certificate expired. With nobody available to renew them during the government shutdown, these sites are kicking back warning errors.

According to Netcraft, a U.K.-based internet security services company, many government domains can’t be accessed until someone fixes the certificates. Some sites, like one Justice Department subdomain, are at the time of writing completely inaccessible because the domain is included in Chrome’s HSTS preload list, used by browsers to force browsers into using HTTPS only when accessing pages on the domain.

Others, li