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Let's encrypt decided for 3 month to force users to automate and avoid the burden of too much user support. They are a no-profit after all. I believe commercia

Let's encrypt decided for 3 month to force users to automate and avoid the burden of too much user support. They are a no-profit after all. I believe commercial CA are offering free certificates milted to 3 months for the same reasons, and for the up-selling opportunities. I think also cloud providers offer free 1 year TLS certificates, but of course you are also using their other services.

hexa22 5y ago
3 months was an excellent choice because it means you _have_ to automate so it will never expire. While the 1 and 2 year certs always end up expiring on production because someone forgot about them.
- flemhans 5y ago
  Now you just have to upgrade certbot every 1-2 years instead, it feels like.
  - martin-adams 5y ago
    Did that this morning. Was a complete pain but got there in the end.
  - danuker 5y ago
    I have a Debian server, and it has been running unattended pretty much since I installed it. I warmly recommend it. https://wiki.debian.org/UnattendedUpgrades https://wiki.debian.org/UnattendedUpgrades
    - flemhans 5y ago
      Me too, also on Debian. But there have been different installation methods over the time, certbot via deb package, installation script by piping in a URL, certbot-auto, something in /opt, lost track :D
    - hexa22 5y ago
      I had to look at mine once in 5 years because acme v1 shut down.
- wbond 5y ago
  It also means you have to automate things that are tied to your certificate lifetime. Apple Pay on the web requires you authenticate your server, and it uses your certificate serial num as proof you still own the server. This means every three months you need to re-authenticate with Apple Pay. But there is no Acme client for authenticating with Apple Pay. So instead, I was having to re-authenticate something manually every 3 months. It involved logging into an Apple Developer account, downloading a PEM file, uploading to my server and then clicking a button in the Developer Account to check the file. After doing that dance, I happily paid for 2 year certificates from RapidSSL. Now you can only buy one year certificates. I really hope the CAB isn’t successful in making those non-conforming and requiring shorter certs. There are plenty of other environments where certificate automation is not possible. And honestly, I haven’t seen arguments as to how on-machine automation is more secure than requiring someone be involved in the process. While I’m dreaming about improvements to the CA ecosystem, having some way to actually prove your are the company you claim would be amazing. Instead we are actively removing support for anything that tried to provide that…
  - infogulch 5y ago
    I'm not sure why you choose to see this as something that "can't be automated, so must use long-expiry certs" and not "apple fails to offer an api to perform an essential-to-automate task".
    - wbond 5y ago
      I see LE as generally trading low cost certs for expensive labor. It’s great when you have scale and need hundreds of certs. I care more about making it easy for people to pay me than getting “free” certificates that cost me hundreds of dollars in labor costs. Everyone talks about LE like it is perfect. I’ve just determined after using it at four different orgs that for smaller shops it tends to take more time/money to get it working than using long expiring certs deployed via an automation system. Honestly, setting up even more automation, like you suggest Apple provide, would probably cost 5x in labor as being able to purchase 3 year certs for the next 12 years. Automation is great when you have scale. In this case, I don’t. I tend to work at smaller companies, so I’ve never worked at an org big enough for the automation to pay off versus buying certs.
- webmobdev 5y ago
  Concerns when automating and connecting with a third-party service is that you can introduce more vulnerability. (Or even introduce a backdoor if you use a malware / insecure software to do so.)
- ryandrake 5y ago
  Except when certbot fails (silently) for some unknown and different reason every three months, and you have to ssh in anyway to fix it. Out of all the software I run on my tiny hobby VPS (a few web sites, E-mail), certbot requires more babysitting by an order of magnitude. Even more than spamassassin, which gets wedged regularly. I'm not a professional sysadmin, so something is probably configured incorrectly, but certbot's error messages are so cryptic and non-actionable that I've never been able to solve it. So, I have a calendar reminder every three months to log in to the VPS and figure out what went wrong this time...
  - Anunayj 5y ago
    I agree certbot can be a pain the the arse, specially when combined with the fact that you need to also rely on other moving parts (like DNS updates) that can fail in weird ways too. You could try your luck with acme.sh or dehydrated though. My previous setup had a lot of weird problems, my current one seems to be doing fine though, I still think capping the certificates to 3 months is a good idea though, well unless people start taking DNSSEC seriously and adopt DANE [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS-based_Authentication_of_Named_Entities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS-based_Authentication_of_Na...
  - tialaramex 5y ago
    FWIW While your "every three months ssh to the VPS and check" approach can work, I'd commend finding a service (many free ones out there for a small project) that will notify you in a way you're happy with about certificates that are expired or soon-to-expire on your servers.
  - petre 5y ago
    Lego has an option to renew a number of days prior to expiration. LE recommends 30 days. That leaves me with 4 weekly attempts to renew my certificate.
- superkuh 5y ago
  Back before the corporate browsers took over standards via whatwg and worse, unilateral moves, you could have a TLS cert for many, many years. I often set mine for 20. But because of changes browsers have made in the name of security this is no longer possible and so shifts the insecurity to another part of the process (the complex system for automation on both client and server sides).
mytailorisrich 5y ago
> Let's encrypt decided for 3 month to force users to automate and avoid the burden of too much user support. Yeah, if this is free and you have automated the process then, really, the validity period no longer matters. 1 year, 3 months, 1 month, it's all the same for the majority of purposes.
cube00 5y ago
If they insist on keeping the three month limit I wish they'd come up with some better ways to allow you to secure your server. If you want to use the www auth you need to allow outbound connections to any IP (they specifically won't release the range they use), otherwise you have the DNS option which means giving the server access to modify the DNS records which is also unsafe should the box get compromised.
- magicalhippo 5y ago
  With the DNS option the machine doing the request doesn't have to be the machine using the certificate though. I have a separate machine doing the DNS challenge and the cert is then distributed to the machine needing it. Technically true for the regular web challenge, but easier with DNS I think.
  - mimimi31 5y ago
    This is what I do as well. I have set up acme.sh[1] on a Raspberry Pi on my home network, which isn't accessible from the outside. It is triggered every night by a systemd timer and renews (using the DNS challenge) and deploys all expiring certificates. [1] https://github.com/acmesh-official/acme.sh https://github.com/acmesh-official/acme.sh
  - larntz 5y ago
    I'm doing the same for my personal/home lab stuff. I've been using https://github.com/joohoi/acme-dns https://github.com/joohoi/acme-dns for the dns server running on a small vps for all my internal certificates and I haven't had any issues with it.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > If you want to use the www auth you need to allow outbound connections to any IP Only for the time period when you're requesting the cert though: it does not have to be open to the entire Internet 24/7. While this may not satisfy your personal / particular level of security concern, but it is something worth keeping in mind. Using the dehydrated client as an example, the web server could be started and stopped (or the host's firewall rules altered) in the startup_hook() / exit_hook() functions, or the deploy_challenge() / clean_challenge() functions: * https://github.com/dehydrated-io/dehydrated/blob/master/docs/examples/hook.sh https://github.com/dehydrated-io/dehydrated/blob/master/docs... > otherwise you have the DNS option which means giving the server access to modify the DNS records which is also unsafe should the box get compromised. Are you aware of LE/ACME's "DNS alias" mode? * https://github.com/acmesh-official/acme.sh/wiki/DNS-alias-mode https://github.com/acmesh-official/acme.sh/wiki/DNS-alias-mo... * https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/technical-deep-dive-securing-automation-acme-dns-challenge-validation https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/technical-deep-dive-se... Let us say you want to get a cert for foo.example.com. Letting an ACME client change the value of that could be a risk, as you state. So what you can do is (manually) create a CNAME _acme-challenge.foo.example.com, and point that elsewhere, like _acme-challenge.foo.dnsauth.example.com. You then allow the ACME client to alter (just) the TXT records of _acme-challenge.foo.dnsauth. People have even written simple DNS server that allow for updating of records via a RESTful API, so you can server just the (e.g.) dnsauth sub-domain from it, leaving your main domain untouched (besides the initial CNAME addition): * https://github.com/joohoi/acme-dns https://github.com/joohoi/acme-dns There's also a CLI utility that can handle access the APIs of several dozen DNS companies so you don't have to roll your own if you want to server the sub-domain from your current provider: * https://github.com/AnalogJ/lexicon https://github.com/AnalogJ/lexicon And you don't have to use a sub-domain, but something else entirely too: instead of dnsauth.example.com you can point the CNAME to example-dnsauth.com or example.org. So if your primary DNS provider doesn't have an API, you can use another one that does. The destination CNAME does not matter as long as you control and can update it.

hexa22 5y ago

3 months was an excellent choice because it means you _have_ to automate so it will never expire. While the 1 and 2 year certs always end up expiring on production because someone forgot about them.

flemhans 5y ago
Now you just have to upgrade certbot every 1-2 years instead, it feels like.
- martin-adams 5y ago
  Did that this morning. Was a complete pain but got there in the end.
- danuker 5y ago
  I have a Debian server, and it has been running unattended pretty much since I installed it. I warmly recommend it. https://wiki.debian.org/UnattendedUpgrades https://wiki.debian.org/UnattendedUpgrades
  - flemhans 5y ago
    Me too, also on Debian. But there have been different installation methods over the time, certbot via deb package, installation script by piping in a URL, certbot-auto, something in /opt, lost track :D
  - hexa22 5y ago
    I had to look at mine once in 5 years because acme v1 shut down.
wbond 5y ago
It also means you have to automate things that are tied to your certificate lifetime. Apple Pay on the web requires you authenticate your server, and it uses your certificate serial num as proof you still own the server. This means every three months you need to re-authenticate with Apple Pay. But there is no Acme client for authenticating with Apple Pay. So instead, I was having to re-authenticate something manually every 3 months. It involved logging into an Apple Developer account, downloading a PEM file, uploading to my server and then clicking a button in the Developer Account to check the file. After doing that dance, I happily paid for 2 year certificates from RapidSSL. Now you can only buy one year certificates. I really hope the CAB isn’t successful in making those non-conforming and requiring shorter certs. There are plenty of other environments where certificate automation is not possible. And honestly, I haven’t seen arguments as to how on-machine automation is more secure than requiring someone be involved in the process. While I’m dreaming about improvements to the CA ecosystem, having some way to actually prove your are the company you claim would be amazing. Instead we are actively removing support for anything that tried to provide that…
- infogulch 5y ago
  I'm not sure why you choose to see this as something that "can't be automated, so must use long-expiry certs" and not "apple fails to offer an api to perform an essential-to-automate task".
  - wbond 5y ago
    I see LE as generally trading low cost certs for expensive labor. It’s great when you have scale and need hundreds of certs. I care more about making it easy for people to pay me than getting “free” certificates that cost me hundreds of dollars in labor costs. Everyone talks about LE like it is perfect. I’ve just determined after using it at four different orgs that for smaller shops it tends to take more time/money to get it working than using long expiring certs deployed via an automation system. Honestly, setting up even more automation, like you suggest Apple provide, would probably cost 5x in labor as being able to purchase 3 year certs for the next 12 years. Automation is great when you have scale. In this case, I don’t. I tend to work at smaller companies, so I’ve never worked at an org big enough for the automation to pay off versus buying certs.
webmobdev 5y ago
Concerns when automating and connecting with a third-party service is that you can introduce more vulnerability. (Or even introduce a backdoor if you use a malware / insecure software to do so.)
ryandrake 5y ago
Except when certbot fails (silently) for some unknown and different reason every three months, and you have to ssh in anyway to fix it. Out of all the software I run on my tiny hobby VPS (a few web sites, E-mail), certbot requires more babysitting by an order of magnitude. Even more than spamassassin, which gets wedged regularly. I'm not a professional sysadmin, so something is probably configured incorrectly, but certbot's error messages are so cryptic and non-actionable that I've never been able to solve it. So, I have a calendar reminder every three months to log in to the VPS and figure out what went wrong this time...
- Anunayj 5y ago
  I agree certbot can be a pain the the arse, specially when combined with the fact that you need to also rely on other moving parts (like DNS updates) that can fail in weird ways too. You could try your luck with acme.sh or dehydrated though. My previous setup had a lot of weird problems, my current one seems to be doing fine though, I still think capping the certificates to 3 months is a good idea though, well unless people start taking DNSSEC seriously and adopt DANE [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS-based_Authentication_of_Named_Entities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS-based_Authentication_of_Na...
- tialaramex 5y ago
  FWIW While your "every three months ssh to the VPS and check" approach can work, I'd commend finding a service (many free ones out there for a small project) that will notify you in a way you're happy with about certificates that are expired or soon-to-expire on your servers.
- petre 5y ago
  Lego has an option to renew a number of days prior to expiration. LE recommends 30 days. That leaves me with 4 weekly attempts to renew my certificate.
superkuh 5y ago
Back before the corporate browsers took over standards via whatwg and worse, unilateral moves, you could have a TLS cert for many, many years. I often set mine for 20. But because of changes browsers have made in the name of security this is no longer possible and so shifts the insecurity to another part of the process (the complex system for automation on both client and server sides).

mytailorisrich 5y ago

> Let's encrypt decided for 3 month to force users to automate and avoid the burden of too much user support. Yeah, if this is free and you have automated the process then, really, the validity period no longer matters. 1 year, 3 months, 1 month, it's all the same for the majority of purposes.

cube00 5y ago

If they insist on keeping the three month limit I wish they'd come up with some better ways to allow you to secure your server. If you want to use the www auth you need to allow outbound connections to any IP (they specifically won't release the range they use), otherwise you have the DNS option which means giving the server access to modify the DNS records which is also unsafe should the box get compromised.

magicalhippo 5y ago
With the DNS option the machine doing the request doesn't have to be the machine using the certificate though. I have a separate machine doing the DNS challenge and the cert is then distributed to the machine needing it. Technically true for the regular web challenge, but easier with DNS I think.
- mimimi31 5y ago
  This is what I do as well. I have set up acme.sh[1] on a Raspberry Pi on my home network, which isn't accessible from the outside. It is triggered every night by a systemd timer and renews (using the DNS challenge) and deploys all expiring certificates. [1] https://github.com/acmesh-official/acme.sh https://github.com/acmesh-official/acme.sh
- larntz 5y ago
  I'm doing the same for my personal/home lab stuff. I've been using https://github.com/joohoi/acme-dns https://github.com/joohoi/acme-dns for the dns server running on a small vps for all my internal certificates and I haven't had any issues with it.
throw0101a 5y ago
> If you want to use the www auth you need to allow outbound connections to any IP Only for the time period when you're requesting the cert though: it does not have to be open to the entire Internet 24/7. While this may not satisfy your personal / particular level of security concern, but it is something worth keeping in mind. Using the dehydrated client as an example, the web server could be started and stopped (or the host's firewall rules altered) in the startup_hook() / exit_hook() functions, or the deploy_challenge() / clean_challenge() functions: * https://github.com/dehydrated-io/dehydrated/blob/master/docs/examples/hook.sh https://github.com/dehydrated-io/dehydrated/blob/master/docs... > otherwise you have the DNS option which means giving the server access to modify the DNS records which is also unsafe should the box get compromised. Are you aware of LE/ACME's "DNS alias" mode? * https://github.com/acmesh-official/acme.sh/wiki/DNS-alias-mode https://github.com/acmesh-official/acme.sh/wiki/DNS-alias-mo... * https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/technical-deep-dive-securing-automation-acme-dns-challenge-validation https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/technical-deep-dive-se... Let us say you want to get a cert for foo.example.com. Letting an ACME client change the value of that could be a risk, as you state. So what you can do is (manually) create a CNAME _acme-challenge.foo.example.com, and point that elsewhere, like _acme-challenge.foo.dnsauth.example.com. You then allow the ACME client to alter (just) the TXT records of _acme-challenge.foo.dnsauth. People have even written simple DNS server that allow for updating of records via a RESTful API, so you can server just the (e.g.) dnsauth sub-domain from it, leaving your main domain untouched (besides the initial CNAME addition): * https://github.com/joohoi/acme-dns https://github.com/joohoi/acme-dns There's also a CLI utility that can handle access the APIs of several dozen DNS companies so you don't have to roll your own if you want to server the sub-domain from your current provider: * https://github.com/AnalogJ/lexicon https://github.com/AnalogJ/lexicon And you don't have to use a sub-domain, but something else entirely too: instead of dnsauth.example.com you can point the CNAME to example-dnsauth.com or example.org. So if your primary DNS provider doesn't have an API, you can use another one that does. The destination CNAME does not matter as long as you control and can update it.