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Let's Encrypt
Let's Encrypt is a non-profit certificate authority run by Internet Security Research Group (ISRG) that provides X.509 certificates for Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption at no charge. It is the world's largest certificate authority, used by more than 600 million websites, with the goal of all websites being secure and using HTTPS. The Internet Security Research Group (ISRG), the provider of the service, is a public benefit organization. Major sponsors include the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Mozilla Foundation, OVHcloud, Cisco Systems, Facebook, Google Chrome, the Internet Society, AWS, Nginx, and the Gates Foundation. Other partners include the certificate authority IdenTrust, the University of Michigan, and the Linux Foundation.
The mission for the organization is to create a more secure and privacy-respecting World-Wide Web by promoting the widespread adoption of HTTPS. Let's Encrypt certificates are valid for 90 days, during which renewal can take place at any time. This is handled by an automated process designed to overcome manual creation, validation, signing, installation, and renewal of certificates for secure websites. The project claims its goal is to make encrypted connections to World Wide Web servers ubiquitous. By eliminating payment, web server configuration, validation email management and certificate renewal tasks, it is meant to significantly lower the complexity of setting up and maintaining TLS encryption.
On a Linux web server, execution of only two commands is sufficient to set up HTTPS encryption and acquire and install certificates. To that end, a software package was included into the official Debian and Ubuntu software repositories. Current initiatives of major browser developers such as Mozilla and Google to deprecate unencrypted HTTP are counting on the availability of Let's Encrypt. The project is acknowledged to have the potential to accomplish encrypted connections as the default case for the entire Web.
The service only issues domain-validated certificates, since they can be fully automated. Organization Validation and Extended Validation Certificates both require human validation of any registrants, and are therefore not offered by Let's Encrypt. Support of ACME v2 and wildcard certificates was added in March 2018. The domain validation (DV) utilized by Let's Encrypt dates back to 2002 and was at first controversial when introduced by GeoTrust before becoming a widely accepted method for the issuance of SSL certificates.
By being as transparent as possible, the organization hopes to both protect its own trustworthiness and guard against attacks and manipulation attempts. For that purpose it regularly publishes transparency reports, publicly logs all ACME transactions (e.g. by using Certificate Transparency), and uses open standards and free software as much as possible.
The Let's Encrypt project was started in 2012 by two Mozilla employees, Josh Aas and Eric Rescorla, together with Peter Eckersley at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and J. Alex Halderman at the University of Michigan. Internet Security Research Group, the company behind Let's Encrypt, was incorporated in May 2013.
Let's Encrypt was announced publicly on November 18, 2014.
On January 28, 2015, the ACME protocol was officially submitted to the IETF for standardization. On April 9, 2015, the ISRG and the Linux Foundation declared their collaboration. The root and intermediate certificates were generated in the beginning of June. On June 16, 2015, the final launch schedule for the service was announced, with the first certificate expected to be issued sometime in the week of July 27, 2015, followed by a limited issuance period to test security and scalability. General availability of the service was originally planned to begin sometime in the week of September 14, 2015. On August 7, 2015, the launch schedule was amended to provide more time for ensuring system security and stability, with the first certificate to be issued in the week of September 7, 2015 followed by general availability in the week of November 16, 2015.
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Let's Encrypt
Let's Encrypt is a non-profit certificate authority run by Internet Security Research Group (ISRG) that provides X.509 certificates for Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption at no charge. It is the world's largest certificate authority, used by more than 600 million websites, with the goal of all websites being secure and using HTTPS. The Internet Security Research Group (ISRG), the provider of the service, is a public benefit organization. Major sponsors include the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Mozilla Foundation, OVHcloud, Cisco Systems, Facebook, Google Chrome, the Internet Society, AWS, Nginx, and the Gates Foundation. Other partners include the certificate authority IdenTrust, the University of Michigan, and the Linux Foundation.
The mission for the organization is to create a more secure and privacy-respecting World-Wide Web by promoting the widespread adoption of HTTPS. Let's Encrypt certificates are valid for 90 days, during which renewal can take place at any time. This is handled by an automated process designed to overcome manual creation, validation, signing, installation, and renewal of certificates for secure websites. The project claims its goal is to make encrypted connections to World Wide Web servers ubiquitous. By eliminating payment, web server configuration, validation email management and certificate renewal tasks, it is meant to significantly lower the complexity of setting up and maintaining TLS encryption.
On a Linux web server, execution of only two commands is sufficient to set up HTTPS encryption and acquire and install certificates. To that end, a software package was included into the official Debian and Ubuntu software repositories. Current initiatives of major browser developers such as Mozilla and Google to deprecate unencrypted HTTP are counting on the availability of Let's Encrypt. The project is acknowledged to have the potential to accomplish encrypted connections as the default case for the entire Web.
The service only issues domain-validated certificates, since they can be fully automated. Organization Validation and Extended Validation Certificates both require human validation of any registrants, and are therefore not offered by Let's Encrypt. Support of ACME v2 and wildcard certificates was added in March 2018. The domain validation (DV) utilized by Let's Encrypt dates back to 2002 and was at first controversial when introduced by GeoTrust before becoming a widely accepted method for the issuance of SSL certificates.
By being as transparent as possible, the organization hopes to both protect its own trustworthiness and guard against attacks and manipulation attempts. For that purpose it regularly publishes transparency reports, publicly logs all ACME transactions (e.g. by using Certificate Transparency), and uses open standards and free software as much as possible.
The Let's Encrypt project was started in 2012 by two Mozilla employees, Josh Aas and Eric Rescorla, together with Peter Eckersley at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and J. Alex Halderman at the University of Michigan. Internet Security Research Group, the company behind Let's Encrypt, was incorporated in May 2013.
Let's Encrypt was announced publicly on November 18, 2014.
On January 28, 2015, the ACME protocol was officially submitted to the IETF for standardization. On April 9, 2015, the ISRG and the Linux Foundation declared their collaboration. The root and intermediate certificates were generated in the beginning of June. On June 16, 2015, the final launch schedule for the service was announced, with the first certificate expected to be issued sometime in the week of July 27, 2015, followed by a limited issuance period to test security and scalability. General availability of the service was originally planned to begin sometime in the week of September 14, 2015. On August 7, 2015, the launch schedule was amended to provide more time for ensuring system security and stability, with the first certificate to be issued in the week of September 7, 2015 followed by general availability in the week of November 16, 2015.