The practice of issuing SSL certificates for internal domain names with unqualified extensions could endanger the privacy and integrity of HTTPS communications for upcoming generic top-level domains (gTLDs), according to a security advisory from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The advisory was finalized by ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) last week and warns that existing SSL certificates which have been issued for non-public domain names like those used to identify servers inside private networks, could be used to hijack HTTPS traffic for real domain names as new gTLDs become operational.