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Let’s Encrypt in the spotlight

dancvrcek.com

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Re: Let’s Encrypt in the spotlight

#2
Like with a lot of tech trends, I seem to be one of those people who doesn't "get" the excitement about letsencrypt.

I don't find the process of generating a CSR and submitting it to a CA for signing to be more complicated than setting up letsencrypt. In fact I think it's quite a bit easier.

Re: Let’s Encrypt in the spotlight

#3
post #2

Like with a lot of tech trends, I seem to be one of those people who doesn't "get" the excitement about letsencrypt. I don't find the process of generating a CSR and submitting it to a CA for signing to be more complicated than setting up letsencrypt. In fact I think it's quite a bit easier.

I'm very excited that Letsencrypt is free.

Re: Let’s Encrypt in the spotlight

#4
post #2

Like with a lot of tech trends, I seem to be one of those people who doesn't "get" the excitement about letsencrypt. I don't find the process of generating a CSR and submitting it to a CA for signing to be more complicated than setting up letsencrypt. In fact I think it's quite a bit easier.

The magic isn't Let's Encrypt per se, but the ACME protocol seems to be something traditional CAs should be getting behind.

Re: Let’s Encrypt in the spotlight

#5
post #2

Like with a lot of tech trends, I seem to be one of those people who doesn't "get" the excitement about letsencrypt. I don't find the process of generating a CSR and submitting it to a CA for signing to be more complicated than setting up letsencrypt. In fact I think it's quite a bit easier.

Setting up LE requires you to do/learn a new process, so it's expected that it looks more complicated than the process you already know.

But once you get past that, it's soooo much easier. All my domains are renewed via a cronjob. I don't have to do anything.

Re: Let’s Encrypt in the spotlight

#6
post #2

Like with a lot of tech trends, I seem to be one of those people who doesn't "get" the excitement about letsencrypt. I don't find the process of generating a CSR and submitting it to a CA for signing to be more complicated than setting up letsencrypt. In fact I think it's quite a bit easier.

It's free, and automated so you don't run into TLS outage post-mortems where the question "why does the cert expire at christmas anyways?" is "Because it expired same time last year and during the emergency repair we used the default lifetime period of one year."

Re: Let’s Encrypt in the spotlight

#7
post #4
post #2

Like with a lot of tech trends, I seem to be one of those people who doesn't "get" the excitement about letsencrypt. I don't find the process of generating a CSR and submitting it to a CA for signing to be more complicated than setting up letsencrypt. In fact I think it's quite a bit easier.

The magic isn't Let's Encrypt per se, but the ACME protocol seems to be something traditional CAs should be getting behind.

They are! https://letsencrypt.org/2017/06/14/acme-v2-api.html

From the URL:

Second, ACME v2 was designed with additional input from other CAs besides Let’s Encrypt, so it should be easier for other CAs to use. We want a standardized ACME to work for many CAs, and ACME v1, while usable by other CAs, was designed with Let’s Encrypt in particular in mind. ACME v2 should meet more needs.

Re: Let’s Encrypt in the spotlight

#8
post #2

Like with a lot of tech trends, I seem to be one of those people who doesn't "get" the excitement about letsencrypt. I don't find the process of generating a CSR and submitting it to a CA for signing to be more complicated than setting up letsencrypt. In fact I think it's quite a bit easier.

"I don't find the process of generating a CSR and submitting it to a CA for signing to be more complicated than setting up letsencrypt."

Remember there's multiple benefits that Lets Encrypt claims. A few that come to mind is it's free, transparent instead of shady, and has this tooling ecosystem forming. The free and non-shady parts are the most compelling advantages over prior, commercial CA's. On top of that, it's a public-benefit corporation with board members who have a history fighting against abuses of online privacy. You therefore have more assurance that the tooling you're investing time in might not get more evil or low-quality at the rate another offering might be if driven only by corporate greed.

Re: Let’s Encrypt in the spotlight

#9
post #2

Like with a lot of tech trends, I seem to be one of those people who doesn't "get" the excitement about letsencrypt. I don't find the process of generating a CSR and submitting it to a CA for signing to be more complicated than setting up letsencrypt. In fact I think it's quite a bit easier.

I just have an ansible role which runs against a server and SSL gets set up 100% for free. It's wonderful. One time time investment to write the ansible role, and now it takes like 5 seconds to enable for any server I'd like.

Re: Let’s Encrypt in the spotlight

#10
post #2

Like with a lot of tech trends, I seem to be one of those people who doesn't "get" the excitement about letsencrypt. I don't find the process of generating a CSR and submitting it to a CA for signing to be more complicated than setting up letsencrypt. In fact I think it's quite a bit easier.

I just have an ansible role which runs against a server and SSL gets set up 100% for free. It's wonderful. One time time investment to write the ansible role, and now it takes like 5 seconds to enable for any server I'd like.

So that's the provisioning process at server setup/instantiation; how do you handle the 90 day renewal?
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