Gremlin Scenario: Windows TLS/SSL certificate expiration

How it works

How this Scenario works

This Scenario advances the system clock on your Windows hosts forward by one day, one week, and one month. This triggers certificate validation logic and reveals any TLS/SSL certificates that will expire within those time windows—without waiting for them to actually expire.

Use cases

Why run this Scenario?

Proactively identify expiring certificates on Windows infrastructure, including IIS-hosted services.
Test certificate rotation automation in Windows Certificate Store and Active Directory Certificate Services.
Verify that monitoring detects upcoming certificate expirations on your Windows hosts.
Validate that Windows Time Service (W32Time) recovers correctly after the time shift.

Result

What to expect when you run it

If a TLS certificate expires without renewal, the service on the Windows host fails gracefully and alerts trigger immediately.

Keep going

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Windows TLS/SSL certificate expiration