# SC-075: CAs must lint certificates before signing them

> SC-075 requires CAs to run automated linting on every to-be-signed TLS certificate from 2025-03-15, catching format errors before they become misissuance.

Source: https://ssl.sh/ballots/sc-075/
Last updated: 2026-11-10

SC-075 makes "lint before you sign" mandatory. Since 2025-03-15 every publicly trusted TLS CA must run an automated linting process on each to-be-signed certificate to test its technical conformity with the [Baseline Requirements](https://ssl.sh/glossary/baseline-requirements/), so malformed certificates are stopped before they exist.

## What changed

SC-075 added §4.3.1.2, "Linting of to-be-signed Certificate content", and a recommendation in §8.7 to lint the samples a CA checks during self-audits. The ballot text explains why: CAs have disclosed many incidents of certificates that violated technical requirements, while the industry has free open-source linters that can catch a wide range of these errors if run before a precertificate is signed. The ballot doesn't mandate a specific tool. It was proposed by HARICA and endorsed by DigiCert and Mozilla.

## Effective dates

The BR change took effect on 2024-08-06. Pre-issuance linting has been required since 2025-03-15; linting of self-audit samples is recommended from the same date.

## Who is affected

SC-075 directly affects CAs, and through them everyone who has ever had a certificate revoked because of a CA's encoding mistake. Misissued certificates must be revoked within days under the BRs, so fewer misissuances mean fewer surprise replacements.

## What to do

Nothing is required from site owners. If you want to see what linters check, decode a certificate with our [certificate decoder](https://ssl.sh/tools/certificate-decoder/) and compare its fields with the [certificate profiles](https://ssl.sh/ballots/sc-062/) the BRs define.


| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Ballot | SC-075 |
| Status | Passed |
| Adopted | 2024-06-28 |
| Effective | 2024-08-06 |
| BR version | 2.0.6 |
| Official page | https://cabforum.org/2024/08/05/ballot-sc075-pre-sign-linting/ |