It means the domain uses an SSL/TLS certificate issued by a trusted and globally recognized Certificate Authority (CA). This is a strong indicator of legitimacy and proper maintenance, as malicious domains rarely invest in such certificates.
Three questions every analyst asks before acting on this signal.
It means the domain uses an SSL/TLS certificate issued by a trusted and globally recognized Certificate Authority (CA). This is a strong indicator of legitimacy and proper maintenance, as malicious domains rarely invest in such certificates.
It shows that the certificate underwent additional organizational or extended validation steps. This provides higher assurance that the entity behind the domain is legitimate, reducing the likelihood of misuse for phishing or fraud.
Because threat actors typically prefer free or self-signed certificates for agility and cost. Paid, well-validated certificates are more common in stable, enterprise-managed infrastructures.
A realistic shape of the entry the engine appends to the risk_signals array when this signal fires. Evidence keys are subgroup-default; per-signal overrides documented in the API reference.
{
"slug": "ssl_usage",
"name": "Valid SSL Certificate from Recognized CA",
"group": "http_crawling_history",
"subgroup": "ssl_behavior",
"direction": "safe",
"evidence": {
"cert_issued_days_ago": 9,
"issuer": "letsencrypt",
"valid_for_days": 90,
"rotation_count_90d": 3,
"cert_type": "DV"
}
}15 other signals share the same subgroup. They detect related behaviors and often co-fire on the same IOC.
It indicates that the domain’s SSL/TLS certificate has successfully passed all certificate chain validation checks. The …
It means that the SSL/TLS certificate presented by the domain failed critical validation checks. This can occur due to m…
It means the SSL/TLS certificate’s Common Name (CN) or Subject Alternative Name (SAN) does not match the accessed domain…
It means the SSL/TLS certificate of the domain includes verified organizational details that have been authenticated by …
The Verdict Gallery is a curated stream of real verdicts. Filter by this signal to see exactly which IOCs it caught, what other signals fired alongside it, and what the engine recommended.
100 IOCs/day on the free tier, LLM layer included. No card required.