Overview
On December 8th 2025, Sectigo abruptly revoked RustDesk’s Extended Validation (EV) Code Signing Certificate without presenting any evidence of malicious behavior or security compromise. This unilateral action immediately disrupted RustDesk users worldwide, triggering false SmartScreen warnings, breaking enterprise deployments, and damaging trust in the software supply chain.
As an open-source remote desktop project used by millions globally, RustDesk takes security and transparency as core principles.
Sectigo’s unjustified revocation — later admitted to be a false positive — represents not only a direct harm to our project but also a serious threat to the integrity of the global digital certificate trust model.
Why Sectigo’s Action Is Unacceptable
According to the CA/Browser Forum EV Code Signing Guidelines, a CA may revoke an EV certificate only when supported by verifiable, auditable evidence such
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confirmed malicious activity,
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verified key compromise,
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fraudulent organization information, or
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legal mandate.
None of these conditions applied to RustDesk.
Sectigo’s decision to revoke a critical EV certificate based on an internal false positive — without evidence, without warning, and without transparency — is a breach of industry standards and a dangerous precedent.
If a CA can arbitrarily revoke certificates, the entire trust system that underpins software distribution becomes fragile.
CAs exist on trust and trust alone.
This, along with any other mistake, erodes that trust and will have damaged Sectigo’s reputation at least as much as Rustdesk’s.
I doubt there’s any conspiracy or higher figure at work here. Just human error.
Rustdesk will probably have a claim for financial losses and good luck if they pursue that - the admission of a mistake and breach of protocol makes it seem likely to be settled very quickly. The tone of this report suggests that this is somewhere they’ll be heading towards and I suspect Sectigo will pay handsomely to make this story short lived.