Expired SSL Certificate and Encryption

Question

I am relatively new to the world of web development and wanted to know if an expired SSL certificate renders encryption useless or does the site remain encrypted however not tell the user that there is a valid certificate that has not expired?

Answer 1

This is exactly the same situation with a self-signed certificate. The connection will still be encrypted but the browser will warn the user of 'untrusted' certificate (either expired or self-signed).

Actually SSL certificate does not encrypt the contents of the web page. It is encrypted with AES (or a compatible symmetric encryption available to the user's browser). Your SSL certificate is used for key agreement for the symmetric encryption.

Definitelly skim through some "Transport Layer Security" articles.