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?

  • cronEnglish
    131·
    2 months ago

    Letsencrypt issues wildcard certificates. This is however more complicated to setup.

    • MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      11·
      2 months ago

      I’d say they’re actually easier, at least in my experience. Since wildcard certs use DNS-01 verification with an API, you don’t need to deal with exposing port 80 directly to the internet.

      • cronEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        Yes, it can be easier. But not every DNS provider allows API access, so you might need to change the provider.

        (good luck with that in many enterprise scenarios).

        • MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago

          You can also delegate a subdomain to another provider with an API, but yes I see what you mean. Although I feel like getting port 80 open would be difficult as well in those situations.

        • ShortN0te@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          You can use ACNE DNS. Just add the single record for acne dns and then you can the acne dns api to fulfill the challange.

          • cronEnglish
            1·
            2 months ago

            Yes, if you do this manually it will work.

    • mipadaitu@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      Whoa, really??? I guess I just assumed nothing changed in the last 5 years. I need to look into that.