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Let's Encrypt has issued 1.7 million free certificates for more than 3.8 million websites over the past six months. Let's Encrypt also enables companies like Wo

• e12e 11y ago
  But if Letsencrypt were served with an NSL demanding access to their signing keys, how would we know?
  • zrm 11y ago
    That isn't what it's for. You can assume the government (really any government) has control over at least one CA. What Let's Encrypt does against state-level actors is let people easily use HTTPS instead of HTTP without subjecting their users to self-signed certificate warnings. A government could still MITM the connection but that requires an active attack rather than passive surveillance. And active attacks are subject to detection. So it protects against undetectable mass surveillance.
  • lorenzhs 11y ago
    That would allow the government to issue new certificates, not to decrypt traffic to sites using letsencrypt certificates. Active man in the middle attacks are rather noisy, and things like HPKP exist to prevent such attacks
  • DenisM 11y ago
    Cert pinning makes it a difficult and expensive attack to carry out.
• asddubs 11y ago
  i wish they would offer wildcard subdomain support (forget the official term right now) - for services which offer subdomains to their users. I run one such service for free, and would love to offer HTTPS to my customers, but don't want to add yet another running cost for something I don't profit from