[CentOS] Certificates

On Aug 31, 2018, at 4:42 PM, Robert Moskowitz <rgm at htt-consult.com> wrote:
> 
> [Let’s Encrypt] is designed for getting web servers quickly into TLS

Yes.

> ...and then to a more stable provider.

[citation wanted]

> If your content is short information, your contacts will never notice that you go to a new cert quarterly.

They’ll never notice regardless.

I’m looking at a Google.com certificate right now that was generated on August 14th of this year and will not be valid past October 23.  That’s the same replacement schedule as Let’s Encrypt.

The old model of long-lived certificates has no special value.  It’s purely a business decision on the part of the providers and customers.  Automation removes much of this model’s value.

> I can see web services where a new cert every 90 days will cause a pain point.

Describe one.

I’ve been running some of my domains on Let’s Encrypt for years now, and have never had a single user complain to me that my certs are changing too often.

> And for other services like IMAP, SMTP, LDAP (maybe not LDAP) constant changing certs even with a long lived root may get old for your customers.

As long as both the old and new certs are valid at the time of replacement, the client should care nothing about it unless they’ve gone to the trouble to download the cert and check it against the cached copy every time.

I remember hearing about at least one browser plugin that did this, but since the idea of rapid cert replacement has been gaining ground, I expect that plugin has lost much of the small amount of popularity it once held.

> Unfortunately, there has never been an effective business model for small customers.

There is now: it’s called Let’s Encrypt. :)