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Let's Encrypt has issued its first million certificates

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Re: Let's Encrypt has issued its first million certificates

#101

Post by lucb1e »

pfg wrote: post #99
lucb1e wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they force either a valid cert or nothing? Not even unencrypted http/2? Because that would be quite awesome. Edit: are there statements where they say they don't intend to implement it ever, or is it just not supported yet and e.g. Microsoft might still implement it later to please some enterprise stakeholder?

According to this[1], that's a permanent decision. Given that both Google and Mozilla have discussed plans that would eventually mark http:// as unsafe in the UI, I don't think that decision is going to change. [1]: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2015/03/06/tls-in-http2/

Well there is a difference between unsigned encrypted and unencrypted, I'm not saying marking http:// as unsafe implies that they'll always regard unsigned encrypted as completely unprotected, especially with closed source browsers (or browsers where development is a closed process).

Thanks for all the information though! :)

Re: Let's Encrypt has issued its first million certificates

#102

Post by lucb1e »

pfg wrote: post #97
lucb1e wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Otherwise what would they issue the certificate for? A subdomain of something like DynDNS or just your IP address. I know you can't for good reasons, but I'm just saying, it would make sense if you never heard it's for domains only.

DynDNS works fine. CA/B Baseline Requirements (which all trusted CAs have to follow) forbid issuance of certificates that include internal names. Whether you actually bought the domain or just have control over a subdomain (as with DynDNS) doesn't matter. As long as the domain is on the Public Suffix List (which should be best practice for DynDNS providers), you don't even have to worry about rate limits. AFAIK, cert…

> As long as the domain is on the Public Suffix List

Oh, cool, I did not know that this project included stuff like DynDNS! I thought a normal, paid domain was the only way to go (other than dot tk).

> AFAIK, certificates for non-reserved IPs would be allowed.

Many IP addresses are dynamic though, I know of no CA where you can register an IP address and I'd imagine it being for that reason (and it might be CGNAT and perhaps some other reasons). You can of course self-sign one with an IP address, but I don't expect any CA to sign those.

Re: Let's Encrypt has issued its first million certificates

#103

Post by ultramancool »

nly wrote: post #29
StavrosK wrote: post #2

> It is clear that the cost and bureaucracy of obtaining certificates was forcing many websites to continue with the insecure HTTP protocol I never realized this so clearly, but it's true. The biggest hindrance to security until LE was that certs were expensive and hard to install. I don't think it was so much the former as the latter. I'd gladly pay 10% more for my cert if it meant my server could renew automaticall…

I personally find the hassle of installing, configuring and, crucially, testing , both LetsEncrypts scripts, and an accompanying cronjob, much more work and worry than a static nginx ssl config.

I'm in the same boat - especially because I need wildcard certificates (or just lots of certs).

I'm thinking the only thing that would really fix this is an nginx module that would automatically fetch certificates for domains when they're first requested via SNI. First hit takes some time, then it's cached and refreshed once a month or something... it would effectively mean 0 configuration SSL for all new domains.

Re: Let's Encrypt has issued its first million certificates

#104

Post by _ikke_ »

mapunk wrote: post #65
nly wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the LE endgame is that setting up HTTPS will be as easy as setting up SSH It already is. Use a self-signed cert and ask your visitors via a side channel to tick the box to add an exception. That's the security model of SSH, and has the same assurances. It's just a terrible comparison. We can do better. A better comparison would be with DNSSEC... The way to simplify TLS deployment, while getting a better lev…

> Use a self-signed cert and ask your visitors via a side channel to tick the box to add an exception. Don't do this. If you have to ask your users to add an SSL exception you're doing it very wrong.

He was comparing the tls equivalent of how SSH works. First time you connect to an ssh server, you have to accept the host key, which most people do not (and in most situations, can not) verify.

Re: Let's Encrypt has issued its first million certificates

#105

Post by guan »

_yy wrote: post #47
nly wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Once" assuming nothing randomly breaks while you're not looking. What if your cronjob doesn't fire? What if LEs script has a bug and you're not up to date? What if one of the (Python?) dependencies has a bug or breaks? What if LEs servers are being DDoS'd? Can you enumerate and account for all the failure scenarios? I've already botched things with acme-tiny&LE in several different ways. I'm not claiming these risks…

> What if your cronjob doesn't fire? What if LEs script has a bug and you're not up to date? That's why I renew them a week in advance. I set up Nagios checks which alert me when a certificate is not renewed. Those were already in place before LetEncrypt since human error is just as likely as a script breaking.

I renew every month and have not hit their rate limits. That way, even if the cron job doesn’t fire and I don’t notice, there is another chance a month later.

Re: Let's Encrypt has issued its first million certificates

#106

Post by tomschlick »

haroldp wrote: post #87
nacs wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you can add 100 subdomains to an LE certificate which gets you pretty close to a wildcard IMO (if you have over 100 subdomains then buying a real wildcard cert is probably a negligible cost for your service).

This is not quite right. You can pack up to 100 hostnames into ONE cert. That might be useful if you are trying to avoid SNI issues on a single shared IP address. However, you are limited to five subdomain registrations or renewals per seven day window. Since certs are only good for 90 days, you are effectively limited to 60 or so, and that only if you do some crazy timing acrobatics, carefully spread the registratio…

They really need to change the rate limits to something more reasonable. Both per domain and per ip.

Re: Let's Encrypt has issued its first million certificates

#107

Post by Ao7bei3s »

technofiend wrote: post #68
Ao7bei3s wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. You'd have install the custom CA in all devices. Ever tried it on Android? The "network may be monitored" warning doesn't go away. 2. If the certificate is ever compromised, you'll have to keep it in the revocation list forever, or replace the entire CA. (And I hope your CA contains a DNS name restriction.)

>1. You'd have install the custom CA in all devices. Ever tried it on Android? The "network may be monitored" warning doesn't go away. This is the most annoying part of using certs for Radius authentication with Android. Either you self-sign a cert and forever get these warnings, or you let someone else sign your cert and then that CA can issue device certs for your domain.

At least modern Android version support setting the CA certificate in the wifi settings.

(And then there's the university way of things: just run your own trusted (!) CA ;-) (e.g. in Germany: signed by DFN)

Re: Let's Encrypt has issued its first million certificates

#108

Post by metafunctor »

novaleaf wrote: post #80
tokenizerrr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? My nginx ssl config is static as well. It looks at a specific path for my certs, which just happens to be a symlink managed my by letsencrypt tooling. You're going to have to renew anyway. Previously you would have to remember to do that once a year, or maybe once every two years. Now let's ignore the security implications of having certificates that are valid for a year for a moment, and…

I think you are underestimating the cognitive burden this added complexity puts on your ops person (maybe yourself) I know for me, it was a choice between farting around with lets-encrypt for hours, or a $40 wildcard cert. so I went with the $40/year cert instead. There are just too many choices for lets-encrypt with no super-simple how-to for people who don't know this stuff (like myself).

I thought the same, until I actually took it upon myself to actually try LE. 15 minutes later, I had all my sites on LE, automatic renewal configured. I'm looking forward not having to sign in to some website, cut'n'paste certificates around, convert to/from PEM, figuring out what the correct chain is this time, etc.

Re: Let's Encrypt has issued its first million certificates

#109

Post by ris »

XorNot wrote: post #27

The default LE client was kind of a pain to work with. The docker container was better but where it really helped was the Lego golang implementation. That one 'just works' and was super easy to setup behind nginx to run automatically. It also writes a nicer config dir.

acme-tiny was the winner for me.

Re: Let's Encrypt has issued its first million certificates

#110

Post by mozumder »

belorn wrote: post #79
IgorPartola wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EV can die a fiery death. It is bullshit. I don't see a reason why LE can't issue wildcards in the future, though with their current setup they are even less important. Email certificates can be issued by LE as well. Code signing is the only one I see as problematic. In either case, I suspect that LE will take a huge bite out of CA's bottom lines, since there are a lot more DV certs out there than EV ones.

EV is what CA's was supposed to do but initially never did; a trusted third-party validation that checks if a online identity really match the real world identity. Its similar to PGP key-signing, but on a government/industry level. The question I wonder is if CA's can actually survive on only doing their intended job, and if the green bar can sustain enough trust to be worth paying for.

EV needs to be more widespread.

15 years from now we'll probably see a "Let's Validate" as a web-wide movement, to EV every website... but i'll probably cost $100.

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