[Cryptography] letsencrypt.org

[John Denker]

On 09/13/2017 11:18 AM, Bayuk asked:

> Has anyone on this list contributed to  https://letsencrypt.org/ - and/or
> otherwise have personal experience, caveats, recommendations with respect to
> the current service or roadmap?

Executive summary:  I'm a happy customer.

I have used the service for quite a while, since early beta days.

I haven't cryptanalyzed it, but it seems quite solidly built.
They're not aiming for top-level NATO-nuclear security, but
within the bounds of what they claim to do, they seem to take
security very seriously.

I contributed a few very minor suggestions concerning the UI.
The UI has slowly but steadily gotten better over time.  It
is still not super-easy to use;  I would classify it as more
wizard-friendly than muggle-friendly.  The results require
some post-processing to make them fit into my not-very-complex
site.

That is to say, there was an initial learning curve, but by
now renewals have become easy and completely routine for me.
I have about 800 lines of localized instructions and scripts
to help me with this.

Bottom line:  YMMV, but for my purposes, it works great.  Using
it is verrrrry much better than not using it.