alt Hacker NewsIn the most extreme case, you can just issue a certificate and not use it anywhere. If it leaks, it's still a security issue, because it's valid.
More realistically, especially with sub-CAs, they might only be used on e.g. corporate networks. TLS scanners may not be able to reach any of the hosts that uses such a cert. As the sibling post points out, clients checking for the cert in Certificate Transparency logs counters that (adding a requirement that the cert be publicly known, which TLS/X509 by itself very much does not have) — but of course this only helps if your client does CT…
Ah okay, thanks. So to be concrete, something like automation running 'curl' on an internal network might see the full chain, including the weak cert, and be vulnerable, but scanners on the wider internet won't see it. I was confused by "...there's no way you'll ever get it as a response on a TLS connection..." — I guess you just meant a _public_ TLS connection. Or it could be otherwise installed on corporate machines' local cert bundles.