Happy birthday to Let's Encrypt !
Huge thanks to everyone involved in making HTTPS available to everyone for free !
And it changed the Internet, for good and a lot.
this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024
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SSL Certs were so god awful before certbot that it’s hard to explain now that it’s so easy and free.
Also fucking expensive
Damn! That's definitely a "I'm old" moment for me. I still remember when I first heard about the concept and I remember setting it up the first time on a self hosted project (which seemed harder back then).
Awesome project!
A client of mine pays for an SSL cert he doesn’t even use. I’ve told him before I moved him to Let’s Encrypt because I was able to automate the renew process. He decided he needed to continue paying for the SSL cert. I told him we are not using it, but he doesn’t believe me. So he continues to pay for it.
I love it when companies are too stubborn to update their costs despite the necessity changing over the years.
My previous employment kept buying microsoft office license keys despite us already moving to 365. They probably did it out of habit when buying new computers. Needless to say I have a cardstack of license keys at home lol. Granted it’s for Office 2013 but I don’t really need the latest version for basic document processing.
TLS certificates have huge margins, so web hosts love selling them.
Lol I instinctively freaked out when I saw the post preview assuming it was going to be a post about a major data breach or exploit of some sort relating to Let's Encrypt.
I probably need more positivity in my life 😂
I worked for a company we had 300 websites, the boss wanted to buy certs. I told him about Lets Encrypt. He loved the idea it saved us a bunch of money. I suggest we donate $100 to them. Hes says "NO F-ing way!".
And my parents still buy SSL certs because that's just what they know 🤢
Today it's just more or less stupid to buy SSL you can get one extremely easy for free from Let's Encrypt or Google Trust..
Yeah, I uh...I think that's kinda what this whole conversation here is about
I've tried explaining to them before, but they think that it's a scam because it's free lol
My last cert renewal was $20 for 3 years. That's less than a dollar a month, not exactly breaking the bank.
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It doesn't say on the website but on their anniversary day they are giving away unlimited ssl certs!
Well, they do rate limit
Let's Encrypt is amazing, but are there any equally trustworthy alternatives people could switch to if something bad happens to it?
They came up with the ACME protocol, so presumably somebody could. The real barrier to entry is the cost of getting into that certificate chain of trust. I have no idea why it's so difficult and expensive.
Well, it's difficult, as it should be, because if you control a certificate in the active chain of trust of browsers, you can hack pretty much anything you want.
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If it begins to enshitify, someone will quickly take up the helm. It's become so core now that someone like Cloudflare would just be like "We do this now."
Cloudflare sort of provides this now by being a MITM to secure your site between your server and the end user. But this requires you and your end user to trust Cloudflare.
And fwiw the ACME protocol is open so anyone can implement it. I believe even the ACME software that EFF sends out allows you to choose your server with some configuration.
Cloudfare means no click from me (TBH after I clicked)
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I think Cloudflare enshittifying is a bigger risk that Let's Encrypt.
Maybe ZeroSSL
They don't offer wildcard certs, but otherwise I think they are.
I wanna say acme.sh defaults to them.
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ZeroSSL, plus a few paid companies support ACME (I know Sectigo and GoDaddy do). Sure, the latter are paid services, but in theory you can switch to them and use the exact same setup you're currently using with Let's Encrypt, just with some config changes.
Huge impact on a tiny budget - that’s extremely impressive. The world could be so much better without rent seeking parasites.
Just two months ago, a security team member dinged one of our services for using Lets Encrypt, as "it's not as secure as a traditional CA".
I'd love for them to explain how, if anything the short cert validity and constant re-checking of the domain seems more secure than traditional CAs
I'd also argue that the fact that it's 100% automated and their software is open source makes it objectively more secure. On the issuing side, there's no room for human error, social engineering, etc.
It's sad that these arguments are still being shared. It was the same arguments years ago from people that would just assume that a free cert was inherently unsafe.
Can anyone fill me on this? Why is it so significant?
HTTPS certs used to be very expensive and technically complicated, making it out of reach for most smaller orgs. Let's Encrypt brought easy mass adoption and changed encryption availability on the web for everyone.
They also made it a open protocol (the ACME protocol), so now there's a bunch of certificate providers that implement the same protocol and thus can work with the same client apps (Certbot, acme.sh, etc). I know Sectigo and GoDaddy support ACME at least. So even if you don't use Let's Encrypt, you can still benefit from their work.
Lots of people shitting on stories of people who buy certs.
You do still have to buy a cert if you want one for a .onion. Let's encrypt still doesn't support it :(
But...an onion address doesn't need a cert?
Some apps refuse to work if you dont have TLS, so it depends what you're running
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Underrated. Stuff rocks.
I'm sad to say that all my sites where http only until 10 years ago
Well, you usually had to pay extra back then!
That's very great news! Thank you for all the good work!
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