Selfhosted

39980 readers

690 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
No spam posting.
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
No trolling.

Resources:

selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
awesome-selfhosted software
awesome-sysadmin resources
Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

105

Paid SSL vs Letsencrypt (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

109 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm curious what the benefits are of paying for SSL certificates vs using a free provider such as letsencrypt.

What exactly are you trusting a cert provider with and what are the security implications? What attack vectors do you open yourself up to when trusting a certificate authority with your websites' certificates?

In what way could it benefit security and/or privacy to utilize a paid service?

And finally, which paid SSL providers are considered trustworthy?

I know Digicert is a big player, but their prices are insane. Comodo seems like a good affordable option, but is it a trustworthy company?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Worked as a sysadmin for years dealing with all kinds of certificates. Liek others have said if you can't automate the process a paid certificate buys you 12 months at a time in validity. Also wildcard certificates are more difficult to do automated with let's encrypt. If you want EV certificates (where the cert company actually calls you up and verifies you're the company you claim to be) you also need to go the paid route

In my experience trustworthyness of certs is not an issue with LE. I sometimes check websites certs and of I see they're LE I'm more like "Good for them"

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Also wildcard certificates are more difficult to do automated with let's encrypt.

They are trivial with a non-garbage domain provider.

If you want EV certificates (where the cert company actually calls you up and verifies you're the company you claim to be) you also need to go the paid route

The process however isn't as secure as one might think: https://cyberscoop.com/easy-fake-extended-validation-certificates-research-shows/

In my experience trustworthyness of certs is not an issue with LE. I sometimes check websites certs and of I see they're LE I'm more like "Good for them"

Basically, am LE cert says "we were able to verify that the operator of this service you're attempting to use controls (parts of) the domain it claims to be part of". Nothing more or less. Which in most cases is enough so that you can secure the connection. It's possibly even a stronger guarantee than some sketchy cert providers provided in the past which was like "we were able to verify that someone sent us money".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Having a non-garbage domain provider can be a luxury. I used to work at a place where we were paying boatloads of money for certificates from Sectigo for internal services, and they were charging us extra per additional name and even more if we wanted a wildcard, even though it didn't cost them anything to include those options. Getting IT to set up the DNS records for Let's Encrypt DNS verification was never going to happen.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I was also with a provider that didn't offer API access for the longest time. When they then increased prices, I switched, now paying a third of their asking price per year at a very good provider.

I guess migrating is difficult if the provider doesn't offer a mechanism to either dump the DNS to a file or perform a zone transfer (the later being part of the standard).

Can only recommend INWX for domains, though my personal requirements aren't the highest.