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Show HN: Anchor Relay – A faster, easier way to get Let's Encrypt certificates

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Show HN: Anchor Relay – A faster, easier way to get Let's Encrypt certificates

#1

Post by geemus »

From the cryptic terminal commands to the innumerable ways to shoot yourself in the foot, I always struggled to use TLS certificates. I love how much easier (and cheaper) Let's Encrypt made it to get certificates, but there are still plenty of things to struggle with.

That's why we built Relay: a free, browser-based tool that streamlines the ACME workflow, especially for tricky setups like homelabs. Relay acts as a secure intermediary between your ACME client and public certificate authorities like Let's Encrypt.

Some ways Relay provides a better experience:

  - really fast, streamlined certificates in minutes, with any ACME client
  - one-time upfront DNS delegation without inbound traffic or DNS credentials sprinkled everywhere
  - clear insights into the whole ACME process and renewal reminders
Try Relay now: https://anchor.dev/relay

Or read our blog post: https://anchor.dev/blog/lets-get-your-homelab-https-certifie...

Please give it a try (it only takes a couple minutes) and let me know what you think.

Show HN: Anchor Relay – A faster, easier way to get Let's Encrypt certificates
anchor.dev

Re: Show HN: Anchor Relay – A faster, easier way to get Let's Encrypt certificates

#3

Post by geemus »

xmprt wrote: post #2

I'm sure some people would find this useful but forgive me if I'm not ready to hand away my security to some unknown third party company. I don't know the first thing about CAs but Let's Encrypt really isn't that difficult to understand.

We take security very seriously, which is why we designed Relay to work so that we never have to see your encryption keys. If Let's Encrypt is working well enough for you, that's great, but we've also heard about rough edges that people struggle with so we are trying to help them out.

Re: Show HN: Anchor Relay – A faster, easier way to get Let's Encrypt certificates

#4

Post by michaelt »

xmprt wrote: post #2

I'm sure some people would find this useful but forgive me if I'm not ready to hand away my security to some unknown third party company. I don't know the first thing about CAs but Let's Encrypt really isn't that difficult to understand.

I believe the intent here is:

* If you want an SSL certificate for, say, your printer

* And you don’t want to expose your printer’s port 80 to the public internet because you’re not stupid

* And you don’t want to put your DNS credentials onto your printer either, because again, you’re not stupid

* And you don’t want to pay for a certificate with a longer validity, because it’s a home printer, so you’re stitch with monthly cert rotations

* And you’ve embraced the reality that one can delegate SSL not just to CAs, but also to other third parties. Usually the likes of AWS & cloudflare - but why stop there?

Then this product is what you need!

Re: Show HN: Anchor Relay – A faster, easier way to get Let's Encrypt certificates

#8

Post by eternauta3k »

michaelt wrote: post #4
xmprt wrote: post #2

I'm sure some people would find this useful but forgive me if I'm not ready to hand away my security to some unknown third party company. I don't know the first thing about CAs but Let's Encrypt really isn't that difficult to understand.

I believe the intent here is: * If you want an SSL certificate for, say, your printer * And you don’t want to expose your printer’s port 80 to the public internet because you’re not stupid * And you don’t want to put your DNS credentials onto your printer either, because again, you’re not stupid * And you don’t want to pay for a certificate with a longer validity, because it’s a home printer, so you’re stitch with mo…

Why not sign it yourself?

Re: Show HN: Anchor Relay – A faster, easier way to get Let's Encrypt certificates

#9

Post by benburkert »

aeaa3 wrote: post #6

Does this means that you have the ability to a) impersonate the identities of your users and b) decrypt the SSL traffic of your users ?

It does not.

Anchor never see sees your private keys for certificates.

We hold an ACME account key on your behalf with the CA, but we cannot use it impersonate your domain or decrypt traffic.

We have a more technical overview of how this works in our docs: https://anchor.dev/docs/public-certs/acme-relay

Re: Show HN: Anchor Relay – A faster, easier way to get Let's Encrypt certificates

#10

Post by mano78 »

benburkert wrote: post #7
NoahZuniga wrote: post #5

Your site doesn't work. The right arrow button is always disabled

sorry about that! mind sharing what domain name (or something similar that also doesn't work) & what browser you used?

iOS safari
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