Resolved Let's Encrypt and internationalized domain names (IDN)

[King555]

I use the Let's Encrypt extension and I have a domain in Plesk with three alias domain names. Two of these aliases are IDNs, which means they have a non-ASCII character in the name.

It looks like Let's Encrypt cannot get a certificate for these two domains. At least they are not secured. Are IDNs not supported?

 

[Ales]

Generally speaking, the IDN domain names don't actually have non ASCII characters. Unicode characters are encoded into ASCII before the domain is registered. It is the web clients (browsers, etc.) and the software such as Plesk that convert the domain name back before displaying it to a human. Otherwise you'd see something like xn--bea2o6c.com. But it's all ASCII in the background.

I just checked and we have IDN domains in Plesk secured with Let's Encrypt, but they all seem to be main domains, no aliases. My guess is that you've discovered a bug.

Are these two TLD, so a .com or a .net or..? I'm asking because there are some country level domain registries out there that have specific IDN implementations. It would help to know to which registry do these two domains belong to.

 

[King555]

My problem solved itself. Until January 2019, the domains (with .de TLDs, btw.) were secured by Let's Encrypt. But then, without any error message, until today, they weren't (and I do not know the reason).

Today I discovered the option "Secure websites" (I translated this option) within the SSL/TLS options per domain/subscription in Plesk. I enabled it and about an hour later the two missing domains were part of the certificate.

So maybe there was a bug in the meantime.