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> I agree that Let's Encrypt is great A single company managing the security for the entire internet? That doesn't sound great.
by isostatic 8y ago
> I agree that Let's Encrypt is great
A single company managing the security for the entire internet? That doesn't sound great.
- yoshuaw 8y agoLetsencrypt has dramatically helped increase the amount of websites that are secured with SSL. Theyyre important, but not even close to being the sole certificate authority. Besides: their stack is open and available. If monopoly would ever be a concern in the future, other CAs could spin up using the same software. But that doesn't seem something worth being concerned about right now.
- isostatic 8y agoIt has, to the point that http is now a problem. Imagine that LE vanishes, what happens then? 62% of sites use letsencrypt [0], up from 35% in Nov 2017 [1]. Monopolies are bad, be they Microsoft or Google, and that's a worrying trend. [0] https://censys.io/certificates/report?q=tags%3Atrusted&field=parsed.issuer.organization.raw&max_buckets=50 https://censys.io/certificates/report?q=tags%3Atrusted&field... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15744359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15744359
- LinuxBender 8y agoIn fact, there have been some HN posts lately talking about having a backup CA, since LE is not the only free CA that allows automation of cert creation. Hopefully everyone has documented all the systems that auto-generate certs, what certs they request and put that in a manifest so that they can have a contingency plan, in the even that LE is knocked offline or shut down for whatever reason. It can certainly happen.