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Don't submit to the SSL cert racket. You can get one for no charge
- stevelosh 15y agoI've used StartSSL in the past. I will never do so again. Yes, the certs are free, and yes, they work in all common browsers. But the process of obtaining them is a horror of Lovecraftian proportions. I'll happily pay a few dollars to Namecheap to be able to avoid the nightmare that is StartSSL's UI.
- saberworks 15y agoThis hasn't been my experience. Their web site is ugly and lame but once you're logged in it's about a 3-step process to apply for the cert. Both times I was emailed within 10 minutes that my cert was ready, and it works fine.
- aiurtourist 15y agoI second this experience, and "Lovecraftian" is indeed an excellent way to describe it. It's not just that the process was difficult, it's that my confidence dwindled through every strange and baffling step. Since you mentioned paying "a few dollars" to Namecheap, can you comment on the feasibility of their $8.95 "PositiveSSL" certificate? ( http://www.namecheap.com/ssl-certificates/comodo.aspx http://www.namecheap.com/ssl-certificates/comodo.aspx )
- ohgodthecat 15y agoCan you extrapolate on what you mean by feasibility, I use positive SSL on a few domains it works fine with no issues and isn't that hard to setup (basically you just need to be able to receive email on your domain).
- foobarbazetc 15y agoThe best (in terms of browser compatibility) cheap cert that Namecheap sell is the RapidSSL cert at http://www.namecheap.com/ssl-certificates/geotrust-ssl-certificates.aspx http://www.namecheap.com/ssl-certificates/geotrust-ssl-certi...
- moe 15y agoBe aware though that GeoTrust and Thawte certs don't work[1] on android devices. There are claims that it can be fixed by adding a cross-root cert[2] but for me that didn't work out. More generally: If you need to support mobile devices then read your CA's compatibility list closely (if you can find it...) and test, test, test. You'd think this shouldn't be an issue anymore in 2012, but it sadly still is. [1] http://www.zimbra.com/forums/administrators/44675-new-geotrust-ssl-certificates-android-users.html http://www.zimbra.com/forums/administrators/44675-new-geotru... [2] https://support.servertastic.com/entries/426677-rapidssl-and-geotrust-certificate-not-trusted-on-mobile-device https://support.servertastic.com/entries/426677-rapidssl-and...
- moonlighter 15y agoNot my experience at all. It's easy and straightforward (really takes less than 10 mins). I have a bunch of startSSL certs in use. Before I started using startSSL certs I used Thawte certs. Dealing with Thawte was HORRIBLE, these guys are extremely pushy (their sales reps repeatedly called me at home to 'convince' me I really should renew my certificates with them and wouldn't take no for an answer). Contrast that with startSSL where I had some questions and Eddy Nigg personally replied within minutes. In summary, I highly recommend giving startSSL a shot.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- hmottestad 15y agoI also found startSSL to be fine. It's not the most user friendly of websites, but by no means horrible. I can see why you may want something simpler if you need 10+ certificates, but if you just want to set up SSL for something then startSSL is fine.
- dikbrouwer 15y agoI find their service excellent. The website doesn't have the latest hip look, but the service is solid, and they are very responsive and helpful in case you run into an issue. For a free service, that's impressive.
- blibble 15y agotheir support is excellent too, I've had Eddy Nigg (the founder) respond to emails within 10 minutes on several occasions.
- moonlighter 15y agoMy experience too. Excellent service and very fast turn-around.
- dikbrouwer 15y agoI find their service excellent. The website doesn't have the latest hip look, but the service is solid, and they are very responsive and helpful in case you run into an issue. For a free service, that's impressive.
- taa 15y agoWe tried them but had to change to a different vendor because the Blackberries didn't recognize their certificates and they had no plans to rectify that. We don't have much BB traffic, but didn't want to exclude BB users just because we wanted to be cheap.
- brdrak 15y agoI disagree also. Their process is fine with me and very quick. I haven't had to contact them in a while, but when I did, got fast, intelligent response. StartCom/StartSSL is a breath of fresh air.
- mike-cardwell 15y agoThe only complication is the fact that they use client side SSL certificates for authentication. I don't know of any other site which does this. Although I like that they're dog fooding, it probably would have been better if they'd stuck with a traditional username/password/cookie scheme for logging in, from a business/usability perspective.
- DEinspanjer 15y agoIt confused me a lot because I used to have an old username/password account with them and when I tried to sign in and got a very generic SSL error from Firefox. That said, once I registered with a new account, the client certificate worked great.
- lloeki 15y ago> I don't know of any other site which does this. CACert does.
- yangez 15y agoI'd feel a lot better about using this if its website looked a bit more professional.
- kingofspain 15y agoThis seems to have been downvoted but its not an invalid point. The web is old enough now that a certain level of design is expected of things people need to trust. A shop down a side alley with a hand written sign inspires less confidence than something plastic on the high street - however wrong that initial impression may be. People with background knowledge may know startssl is legit/good but to a newcomer I can easily see why their first impression is off.
- billpatrianakos 15y agoAbsolutely! I had never heard of Start before and I honestly thought for a moment that maybe this was spam that had somehow got on to the front page as a fluke. I'm serious. I'm not used to seeing a company website make it on the front page of HN or HN at all without there actually being some kind of article on the page you get to. SSL certain are important and I don't think their design is helping them look like a legit business. I trust they are after all the comments here but on first glance I was skeptical and thought it was too good to be true. I know we all pride ourselves on being smart, critical thinker that can look past a site's design and see the true value behind it but I think in some cases it's perfectly normal and acceptable to react this way to a design. Superficiality be damned. I'd rather run from a poorly designed, non-legit looking site and be safe rather than risking it and being sorry later because I gave in to the PC, "don't be superficial" side of me.
- grimatongueworm 15y agoOh, c'mon. You KNOW they licensed that knife image from Victorinox. ;-)
- agildehaus 15y agoIs there any certificate authority with a clean UI? Every single one I have come across has been fairly horrid by today's standards.
- brianjolney 15y agoMy understanding is free ones are not trusted/accepted by the browsers, hence to have something that isnt tossing errors at your users requires a small payment to a CA. I've used positivessl from namecheap whenever I need certs, its something crazy cheap like $5
- dan85 15y agoStartSSL works fine with all recent browsers. (I think IE 7+)
- elliottcarlson 15y agoMy understanding is free ones are not trusted/accepted by the browsers You might mean self-signed certificates?
- charliesome 15y agoWell anyone could start their own CA and hand out free certificates. The problem is that nobody trusts Joe Bloggs' new CA.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- RKearney 15y ago>Unlike the attacks on Comodo and other certificate authorities, these attackers did not >gain enough access to issue valid certificates for arbitrary domains to themselves, StartSSL >said. The attackers were also unsuccessful in generating an intermediate certificate that >would allow them to act as their own certificate authority, The Register reported.
- Kudos 15y agoI went through the horrendous enrolment process only to find they don't issue certs for subdomains.
- moonlighter 15y agoSure they do. I'm using a bunch of them right now. The only restriction startSSL has is that they don't accept popular names like 'amazon' or 'google' for subdomain names (I found out after I tried to get a cert for 'amazon.xxx.com' which we'd run in an AWS EC2 instance for testing). So we switched to 'sandbox.xxx.com' and got the cert within minutes.
- xolox 15y agoThey do, it's just that you cannot register a wildcard certificate for free. When I registered my certificate I could pick one subdomain in addition to the main domain.
- huhtenberg 15y agoKeep in mind that Gandi includes 1 free SSL cert with every domain name. Per year.
- jc4p 15y agoI'm actually shocked at how many places accept the trust chain of my free SSL certificate from Gandi. Some browsers refuse my company's very expensive wildcard certificate from GoDaddy saying it's not trusted but trust mine from Gandi!
- huhtenberg 15y agoTheir certs are issued by Comodo, which is a well established CA. And they are hardly free, their price is simply rolled into the domain registration fee.
- woodson 15y agoThey may be well established, but remember ComodoGate [1,2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comodo_Group#Breach_of_security https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comodo_Group#Breach_of_securit... [2] http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/6177/A_Web_of_Mis_Trust_Comodogate_Part_II http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/6177/A_Web_of_Mis_Trust_Co...
- lmz 15y agoDid you configure the server to send the intermediate certificates for your GoDaddy wildcard certificate? I've experienced similar problems in the past, but sending the intermediate certificate fixed it.
- yuhong 15y agoYea, when you install any SSL certificate, don't forget the intermediate certs!
- andyking 15y agoI'm with Gandi and didn't actually realise I already had this facility under my nose. Thanks for the information!
- js4all 15y agoIts worth to mention that their certificates cannot be used to secure a Java web service because their CA is not included in Java's cert bundle. I had to learn this when I tried to callout to a web service (with a startcom cert) from Salesforce. Also their certs are only free as long as you don't need to revoke it.
- Karunamon 15y agoCame here to say something like this. While the site is a bit of a pain, and the certs are free, make damn sure you have your site configured the way you want it before you generate the certificate. It's $25 to revoke a cert, i.e. free up the name so you can use it again elsewhere. I used part of my domain name for an XMPP cert that I later wanted to use for a web subdomain with the same name.. nope. Stupid.
- pagekalisedown 15y agoWhy bother revoking? Get a new cert from someone else for 10$, ditch the old one, done.
- cinch 15y agoyou'd want to revoke it if someone steals your private key.
- Karunamon 15y agoGiven the way Startcom operates, that could become expensive quickly. Since your private key is your gateway into your account (Why they went with this method instead of requiring a sensible password is beyond me, it's one of the reasons their site is a huge pain...), theoretically every certificate you own is compromised, and therefore you'd be out $25 for each one. ..ouch!
- cinch 15y agoi once built a clojure web app and used a startssl free certificate. it worked fine after i imported it into the java keystore. i was using OpenJDK under linux. were you using Oracle's java?
- jusob 15y agoI'm using it. It is very great to get wildcard certificates, and multi-domain certificates. Yes, their web interface is not great, but it does work.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- dedward 15y agoThey also, like any other CA, have the ability to generate keys in your name any time they like. That would have consequences - but so would abusing your private key. If it's for something where it's that much of a concern (and it IS a legitimate concern, no argument there) then you need a paid certificate anyway - you'd likely want a business name, not a personal one, etc etc...... If we're talking business, you wouldn't be using a free cert from them anyway.
- micheljansen 15y agoI actually did pay them a bit, but only so that I could obtain "verified" status and generate unlimited wildcard certificates for all of my domains. It's a good deal :)
- hohoho2012 15y agoupvoting advertising spam? get a free cert with openssl and a shell!
- xolox 15y agoWhile technically possible that doesn't get you very far, you'd end up with a self-signed certificate. That works fine except for the scary warnings (which look a bit unprofessional). And of course if the client programs of your service do not have an interface for accepting self-signed certificates, you're back to square one.
- hohoho2012 15y agoyes i know, this people scaring started with ff2,ie7? - there is nothing wrong with self signed certs, except useless companys wanna make a quick buck selling fud
- ceejayoz 15y agoThere absolutely should've been some sort of "encrypted but not verified" handling for self-signed certificates. The current state of browsers is that unencrypted HTTP is presented as safer than self-sign encrypted HTTPS. That's lunacy. Unfortunately, there isn't, and as a result self-signed certificates are useless to anyone running a HTTPS site that expects any visitors.
- kennethv 15y agoThough I don't enjoy the current sad state of affairs with regards to the security and validation of CAs, there's something to be said for the old adage that no security is better than false security, and trusting all self-signed certificates would definitely be false security, since eavesdroppers could just do a man-in-the-middle with their own self-signed certificate. I'd personally be really happy to see something like http://perspectives-project.org/ http://perspectives-project.org/ instead of the current web of mistrust.
- fduran 15y agoI tried some time ago and didn't get the certificate or any email back, not worth the hassle to save $20 imho.
- meow 15y agoIs it possible to sign object code (.exe , .dll etc) with any SSL certificate that we buy ? or does this have to be mentioned clearly in the list of features of SSL certificate..
- yardie 15y agoIt's possible that an ssl certificate may have that capability added, but in my experience they've always been sold as separate products. If you need a code signing certificate the cheapest I've found was through Tucows. It's hidden in their developer resource subdomain. We paid $199 for a 3 year code signing cert.
- pbreit 15y agoI did not get a good feeling about StartSSL when I tried getting a free cert. First, as many have pointed out, the web site experience is miserable. Second, I just got a "Error 107 (net::ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR): SSL protocol error." at https://auth.startssl.com https://auth.startssl.com For a product that is supposed to be confidence inspiring, StartSSL is the opposite.
- mike-cardwell 15y agoYou're supposed to have installed the client SSL certificate in your browser before visiting that URL. It caught me out too initially. They use client side SSL certificates for authentication. I don't know any other site which does this.
- xolox 15y agoIt's the first time I came across client side certificates as well. As others have pointed out you have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get a certificate from StartSSL, but if your free time is cheaper than a certificate from another party it can still be worth it (especially because the cost repeats with other parties). I've been a happy customer for more than a year now.
- pbreit 15y agoSo is it not possible to catch that and display a helpful page? But that basically confirms my contention that the user experience is miserable.
- cinch 15y agowhen you sign up they install a certificate in your browser. without that, there's no way to login to your startssl account! so make sure to make a backup of it. i lost my account because i didn't realize this...
- mike-cardwell 15y agoThe SSL certificate for https://grepular.com/ https://grepular.com/ is from StartSSL. I renewed it 5 days ago. The CN is for "secure.grepular.com" (for historical reasons), with a subjectAltName of "grepular.com" I'd like to create a wild card certificate, but that costs money. My understanding is that it is a one off fee (60USD) for them to validate your identity and that it doesn't cost money to renew after that point. I could be wrong though. It's not completely clear.
- JoshTriplett 15y agoThe identity validation expires every year, and you have to pay the $59.90 again to renew it. However, once you've validated your identity, you can generate as many "class 2" certificates (including wildcard certificates) as you like, and those certificates last 2 years.
- DEinspanjer 15y agoI started to do Class 2 identification with StartSSL, but I chickened out after they asked me to provide my marriage certificate and wife's personal info. They have a very detailed policy document describing all sorts of security procedures they purport to adhere to, but I have no way to validate whether they are actually following those policies and no recourse for me or my wife even if it was determined that they are not following them. That is just too risky for the value I would get out of the process. (posted to twitter also https://twitter.com/#!/deinspanjer/status/158596876772450304 https://twitter.com/#!/deinspanjer/status/158596876772450304 ) EDIT: I was contacted by Eddy Nigg with some follow up information. I should have said that the reason they asked for my wife's info is because they wanted phone bills and those are in my wife's name which isn't the same last name as mine. That said, I'll still stand by my statement that the risk and complexity vs. reward was just not suitable for me. EDIT 2: Okay, they offer an alternative for validation: they can mail you a registered letter with a validation code on it. That is much more acceptable to me, so I'll continue on with the process to see how that goes.