Common Name on my Certificate is for Wrong Website

Hi all!

Thank you in advance for your help.

The common name on my SSL certificate is showing a different website than what the certificate is on.

My domain is: www.SuncoastAerials.com

The certificate is showing: common name bluvuz dot com

I would like my SSL certificate on SuncoastAerials.com to show a common name SuncoastAerials.com

I am hosted through BlueHost and have multiple domains on my hosting account.

BlueHost were the ones that enabled the free SSL certificate on my account.

I am using wordpress to build my website.

I login to my Cpanel through bluehost.com

Thank you for your help! :slight_smile:

CommonName is deprecated for matching names on x.509 certificates used for TLS, and has been deprecated for like 18 years now. Let’s Encrypt just puts the first name on the certificate in that field. SubjectAlternativeName is the field that matters.

That being said, I think you can force this by re-issuing your certificate with the --cert-name parameter, but I’m not positive that actually affects the CN as opposed to simply affects housekeeping for Certbot.

EDIT: You’re not using Certbot, my mistake. Didn’t read close enough. You’d have to check with the developer of whatever cPanel tool you’re using to issue these certificates for how to determine CN, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re not going to be able to change this.

Hi @jdw

how did you create this certificate? Do you use a tool of your hoster?

If yes, all these domains

DNS-Name: bluvuz.com
DNS-Name: bluvuz.siestasunvillas.com
DNS-Name: mail.bluvuz.com
DNS-Name: mail.siestasunsetvillas.com
DNS-Name: mail.siestasunvillas.com
DNS-Name: mail.suncoastaerials.com
DNS-Name: siestasunsetvillas.com
DNS-Name: siestasunsetvillas.siestasunvillas.com
DNS-Name: siestasunvillas.com
DNS-Name: suncoastaerials.com
DNS-Name: suncoastaerials.siestasunvillas.com
DNS-Name: www.bluvuz.com
DNS-Name: www.bluvuz.siestasunvillas.com
DNS-Name: www.siestasunsetvillas.com
DNS-Name: www.siestasunsetvillas.siestasunvillas.com
DNS-Name: www.siestasunvillas.com
DNS-Name: www.suncoastaerials.com
DNS-Name: www.suncoastaerials.siestasunvillas.com

are your domains? If yes, then it looks that the tool of your hoster orders the names alphabetical - and the first domain name is the CommonName.

So you can't change that if you use the tool of your hoster.

It looks to me like the certificate was created by BlueHost. In that case it’s up to BlueHost’s discretion which name they request as the CN. Since Let’s Encrypt has rate limits

hosting providers aren’t necessarily able to give every customer their choice of a CN (although this is more likely to be a consequence of the hosting provider’s choice of tools rather than of the Let’s Encrypt rate limits).

As @jared.m mentioned, the CN field no longer has any technical significance. Some people don’t like the way that it may show curious site visitors that your site is hosted on shared infrastructure together with other sites, but this situation is very common—and becoming more common over time!—unless you’re using a VPS or dedicated server.

Thank you for your information. You are right. Since it through my host, I cannot change it.

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I appreciate your info. What you mentioned is correct. Blue host bases the CN on alphabetical order of my domains so I am unable to change it.

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