Yes, the automation is the whole *point* of LetsEncrypt. As you say, the main impediment is cost, which is why they're free - but in order to sustain that cost structure, manual processes must be excised completely and utterly. The 90-day lifetime is a compromise between convenience and security - even if your cert is compromised somehow (say because of badly-implemented automation tools), the compromise is only relevant for 90 days. Obviously, LetsEncrypt isn't going to be issuing and high-assurance certificates; their goal is simply to get *everyone* to encrypt, to eliminate the cost issue as an excuse. Many people much smarter than I have complained that the biggest problem with LetsEncrypt is that they appeared at exactly the wrong time; that their existence will cause the entire (badly broken) PKI system to *not* simply fall into disuse now, which was otherwise being predicted as a near- to medium-term consequence of its fundamental brokenness and multiple compromises. I'm already using LetsEncrypt certificates in a couple of places, where I don't care about the "quality" of the certificate; it's automatically "better" than a self-signed certificate unless you're both extremely cautious AND inhumanly diligent. For me, it's more a convenience tool to get rid of the browser's warning page upon encountering a self-signed cert. Note also that LetsEncrypt certificates, unlike self-signed certificates, work with opportunistic TLS in SMTP. -Adam
-----Original Message----- From: Roundtable [mailto:roundtable-bounces@muug.ca] On Behalf Of Trevor Cordes Sent: February 5, 2017 16:35 To: roundtable@muug.ca Subject: Re: [RndTbl] "Let's Encrypt" by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG)
On 2017-02-05 Hartmut W Sager wrote:
They don't seem to be part of the usual gang - FSF, GNU, GPL, Apache, Linux, etc., etc., yet they express similar philosophies. Who are they? How credible are they and their effort? And how does their effort compare to other free security certificates?
Like David said, their main thrust is automated deployment. Unfortunately, in my mind that's that's their biggest downside. You *must* use their automated tools: AFAIK they provide no normal manual/email way to obtain their certs. That means any processes you've created in-house to handle certs (like I have) are instantly incompatible and would require modification. And it's not just the cert files, their tools auto-edit apache configs, etc. Also, I'm not sure if their tools tie the cert into other SSL-able daemons like sendmail, or if that's even possible given their cert settings.
Also, they issue certs only for 3 months at a time, which kind of necessitates their automated tools.
It's kind of funny, they concentrate so much on deployment when I think the main impediment to most people vis a vis SSL is cost. They have the cost thing beat (free) but then they force you into their proprietary deployment model.
Other than that, I'd say they look legit and benign, and we've talked about them at MUUG before and everyone seems to agree. If you don't run any SSL now and you aren't terribly experienced with it, I see no downside to using let's encrypt. If you already have SSL deployed, do your research before jumping on board just to turn your yearly cost into "free".
Oh ya, one more good thing about Let's Encrypt: their causing the big players to lower their low-end cert prices a bit! That's always good news. _______________________________________________ Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.ca https://muug.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable