3 ms·

So you need to execute 3rd party software on your machine and let it fiddle with your DNS settings? Personally, I would not want to do that.

isostatic 7y ago
Then write your own acme client, it's not a terrible burden -- although I've only personally done it with the normal URL validation method
chme 7y ago
Well, you could use certbot (https://github.com/certbot/certbot https://github.com/certbot/certbot, see https://certbot.eff.org/docs/using.html#dns-plugins https://certbot.eff.org/docs/using.html#dns-plugins), which is from EFF, so not exactly third party, to do that.
jlgaddis 7y ago
Nope, the protocol is well-documented so that anyone who wants to reinvent the wheel can do so.
StavrosK 7y ago
And that's fine. I just let my http server do it automatically.
cyphar 7y ago
They now support wildcards, but in order to verify you are authorised to get a wildcard certificate you need to be able to pass the DNS challenge. Unfortunately there simply isn't another universal, trust-less (and automatable) way of verifying that someone owns a domain -- other than DNS. However, because the DNS check doesn't require writing to the webroot, you could run this on any server you like and then distribute the certificate to your edge nodes (meaning your edge nodes don't need to have access to write to your DNS). Some clients even have scripting hooks which could make this significantly easier. (I assumed the "store my cloudflare API keys on my web host" aspect was your main concern with this method -- not necessarily who wrote the client because there are plenty of other clients.)
- pas 7y ago
  Hm, doesn't Caddy support wildcards without DNS auth? It seems that they work around this by generating a few random subdomains and verify those.
  - aroch 7y ago
    From the Caddy release announcement that supports wildcards[1]: "This release introduces support for wildcard certificates, a new offering from Let's Encrypt. Getting a wildcard certificate requires enabling the DNS challenge. Fortunately, that is extremely simple with Caddy, and it works with over 20 different providers!" 1: https://caddyserver.com/blog/caddy-0_10_12-released https://caddyserver.com/blog/caddy-0_10_12-released
  - cyphar 7y ago
    Caddy requires configuring their DNS provider as well[1]. LetsEncrypt (and ACMEv2) only allow you to get a wildcard if you use the dns-01 challenge. [1]: https://caddyserver.com/docs/automatic-https#wildcards https://caddyserver.com/docs/automatic-https#wildcards
fpoling 7y ago
In this case the third-party software implements a public protocol, comes with a full source written in a very readable language and is sufficiently small to permit a casual review.

isostatic 7y ago

Then write your own acme client, it's not a terrible burden -- although I've only personally done it with the normal URL validation method

chme 7y ago

Well, you could use certbot (https://github.com/certbot/certbot https://github.com/certbot/certbot, see https://certbot.eff.org/docs/using.html#dns-plugins https://certbot.eff.org/docs/using.html#dns-plugins), which is from EFF, so not exactly third party, to do that.

jlgaddis 7y ago

Nope, the protocol is well-documented so that anyone who wants to reinvent the wheel can do so.

StavrosK 7y ago

And that's fine. I just let my http server do it automatically.

cyphar 7y ago

They now support wildcards, but in order to verify you are authorised to get a wildcard certificate you need to be able to pass the DNS challenge. Unfortunately there simply isn't another universal, trust-less (and automatable) way of verifying that someone owns a domain -- other than DNS. However, because the DNS check doesn't require writing to the webroot, you could run this on any server you like and then distribute the certificate to your edge nodes (meaning your edge nodes don't need to have access to write to your DNS). Some clients even have scripting hooks which could make this significantly easier. (I assumed the "store my cloudflare API keys on my web host" aspect was your main concern with this method -- not necessarily who wrote the client because there are plenty of other clients.)

pas 7y ago
Hm, doesn't Caddy support wildcards without DNS auth? It seems that they work around this by generating a few random subdomains and verify those.
- aroch 7y ago
  From the Caddy release announcement that supports wildcards[1]: "This release introduces support for wildcard certificates, a new offering from Let's Encrypt. Getting a wildcard certificate requires enabling the DNS challenge. Fortunately, that is extremely simple with Caddy, and it works with over 20 different providers!" 1: https://caddyserver.com/blog/caddy-0_10_12-released https://caddyserver.com/blog/caddy-0_10_12-released
- cyphar 7y ago
  Caddy requires configuring their DNS provider as well[1]. LetsEncrypt (and ACMEv2) only allow you to get a wildcard if you use the dns-01 challenge. [1]: https://caddyserver.com/docs/automatic-https#wildcards https://caddyserver.com/docs/automatic-https#wildcards

fpoling 7y ago

In this case the third-party software implements a public protocol, comes with a full source written in a very readable language and is sufficiently small to permit a casual review.