Selfhosted

60693 readers

283 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:

Detailed Rules Post

Be civil.
No spam.
Posts are to be related to self-hosting.
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.
Submission headline should match the article title.
No trolling.
Promotion posts require active participation, with an account that is at least 30 days old. F/LOSS without a paywall has exceptions, with requirements. See the rules link for details. Tags [CBH] or [AIP] are required, see the links in Rule 8 for details.
AI-related discussions and AI-involved promotional posts have additional requirements for tagging, as noted in Rule 7 and the AI & Promotional Post Expanded Rules post, and find example disclosures here.

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 3 years ago

MODERATORS

curbstickle@anarchist.nexus

curbstickle_lw@lemmy.world

105

Paid SSL vs Letsencrypt (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 years ago by brownmustardminion@lemmy.ml to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

107 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

[–] Opisek@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

OP's security concern is valid. Different CAs may differ in the challenges used to verify you to be the domain owner. Using something that you could crack may lead to an attacker's public key being certified instead.

This could for example be the case with HTTPS verification (place a file with a specific content accessible through your URL) if the website has lacking input sanitization and/or creates files with the user's input at an unfortunate location that collides with the challenge.

This attack vector might be far-fetched, but there can certainly be differences between different signing authorities.

[–] theterrasque@infosec.pub 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

But even if you use GoMommy extra super duper triple snake oil security checked ssl cert, if I trick LetsEncrypt to sign a key for that domain I still have a valid cert for your site.

[–] Opisek@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

You're right, my bad.

[–] Mike1576218@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Certificate pinning?

Also all let's encrypt certs are public. So if someone malicious gets a cert for your domain, you can notice.

(Thats also why it may be a bad idea to use that for secretButPublicStuff.Yourdomain.com certificate transparency logs are a great way to find attack surface.)

edit oh certificate pinning has been deprecated in favor of checking transparency logs.