I know that I can simply make my own private certificate authority that only I and my family trust. But is there some public provider like letsencrypt that is in a free-er part of the world than the US?
Is anyone wonders why it’s a problem it’s under US juristriction:
Look up the US Cloud Act. It’s everything the media told you China was, but in the hands of an orange dictator.
They have strong canaries in place, namely certificate transparency. They wisely designed themselves in a way to prevent themselves from tampering.
Well, honestly?
Since these certificates are not banned nor up for debate, the NSA probably already have a way to get all the data through another loop hole.
Yes, it protects against “attacks” from outside, but it’s naive to expect they dont have another way in which goes beyond LetsEncrypt.
That loophole is Google and probably cloudflare. Google has their own DNS service, a script tag on nearly every website, half the mobile phone market while being the default search engine on the other half, and provides email to the majority of people. Even if you try not to use their services, they still have an enormous amount of information about you.
Any Govt agency with sufficient power can go to LetsEncrypt and have them either decrypt everything or issue specific certificates that can be decrypted and transparently allow man in the middle monitoring. That so much of the internet is using LetsEncrypt makes it highly likely this is all going on. It’s technically possible and the Govt wouldn’t allow LetsEncrypt to operate without being able to do this. Really this is true with all devices and encryption allowed to be sold. Unless you secretly meet all their demands they control all the required certifications and access to be able to sell your products, list them on the app stores, etc. It’s just a good rule of thumb to consider everything has this starting point unless you design and build the entire hardware and software stack to ensure nothing like this can be done. But you’ll never be able to sell it.
Fortunately, that’s not how it works.
The private key is created on your server, not by Let’s encrypt, and it’s never transferred to them. Nobody can decrypt your data.
Certbot (the official ACME client) is open source, but you’re also welcome to use any other client of your choosing, or make your own. The secrets never leave your server.
Unless the NSA has working powerful quantum computers that can break public key encryption, that they are successfully hiding from the public, they wouldn’t be able to break let’s encrypt certificates backed public key encryption, the math just doesn’t math. It would still take the most powerful super computers millions of years to break RSA 2048.
There’s a reason they want to make encryption illegal, instead of just letting us trust it like sheep. Thankfully, we don’t have to trust anyone, it’s all verifiable math.
It is surprisingly easy to add a custom CA to phones and laptops. When I migrated to services using one with names like
thisservice.lanI thought it would be a lot harder. I just have a generation script that makes a new cert and I throw it in NGINX.Just don’t get too close to TV’s or streaming boxes. Wildly different levels of hell
Very true. I do have a let’s encrypt wildcard cert that I also use with internal IPs for instances like this. But most of my items don’t require that.
awesome, I just setup traefik / le on an old sort domain of mine and make everything inside support https.
Honestly, I was hoping to add client only certs on my jellyfin and open it to friends an family, but none of their streaming devices support it.
Yea, I’ve recently learned LineageOS has an AndroidTV version that runs on a lot of devices, including the Pi. Been considering investigating that.
There are some commercial Certificate Authorities that offer free certificates. But in contrast Let’s Encrypt is a non-profit.
- ZeroSSL (Austria)
- Actalis (Italy)
ZeroSSL is probably what OP is looking for
commercial
free certificates
How do they make money?
Usually they make money with extended certificates where they not only offer a certificate for example.com but also certify that it belongs to Example Ltd.
Those extended certificates used to show the company name next to address bars, but I don’t think browsers do that anymore.
a certificate for example.com
also certify that it belongs to Example Ltd.
I thought that was the whole point of a certificate, to show that the website belongs to the company? Or nah?
Nah, the point is to encrypt the traffic and tell you what you are receiving really comes from example.com and not an evil third party.
Also the controlling party in Italy is practically neo-fascist and Austria is also sliding there again with their Nazi party like AfD in Germany and VB in Belgium getting a huge portion of votes.
I don’t see how it is that much better than a US non- profit.
I think the core thing is that you have to know of a bunch of different CA options and switch when necessary or on a compromised CA.
Both Italy and Austria are EU member states , fall under the GDPR AND NIS2 and while both government(even under the FPÖ) have their downsides neither has legislation that is even remotely close to what the US even have today (and had for decades) and unlike the US both countries still have a very well working judical system and the ECJ.
So. Yes. While not perfect, their situation is massively better than a US non for profit. Total different league. Not even in the same ballpark.
It is. Most EU countries build on a strong legal system of separation of powers etc. that makes it hard to dismantle democracy with the alacrity MAGA is currently doing it in the USA.
But nevertheless, we’re all aware of the rise of fascism in Europe and are extremely worried.
You must be joking.
And you must not have read the relevant US laws.
The thing is, the US is already fascist. Austria (current day) would be an improvement.
Also, you know the downfall of Autistici/Inventati - No - check my post history. One of the events that happened is that US owned PIR removed one of the domain names since they own .org. One less US entity, one less point of failure.
Let’s encrypt is very transparent and has been designed to be auditable. What are you worried about exactly?
Still American. de-Americanizing the tech stack is a good idea.
Are you trying to solve a technica, or political/moral problem? Let’s Encrypt doesn’t create, see, store or log your private cerficates. So, even if they are in the US, I don’t see a risk, and otherwise, the other parts you use in general are probably vulnerable to the problem even if non-US.
For ex. the US could simply order browsers stop validating any certificates not issues by US companies in browsers. And whoosh. Having a non-US certificate won’t help much there either.
This is nonsense. Firefox is open source, you can just fork it.
uncle sam. audit away. until sam says “give me the keys” and then sam has the keys
@flandish @possiblylinux127 Letsencrypt just has the public keys, no private keys. If Letsencrypt gives my public keys to sam, it does not matter, because public keys are public. My private key is under my administration only.
and the backdoor?
@flandish Which backdoor? When I request a CA for a certificate, I send the public key to the CA. The CA does a validation and signs the certificate.
The CA does not see any traffic from my server. A man-in-the-middle needs my private key, which is under my administration. If I loose my private key, it does not matter if the certificate is signed by a US based CA or an European CA.@flandish If US authorities want to fake my server, they can use any CA, regardless which CA I originally used.
Of course, US authorities can force Letsencrypt to revoke my certificates and block any renewing. This is very unlikely to happen. If it happens, I have to change my CA. There would be a downtime for my private services, but there is no data corruption or data loss on my servers.
The transparency logs would mean that any rouge certificates created would leave a paper trail not to mention there is nothing stopping them from issuing a certificate for any domain of their choosing
That the U.S. government can arbitrarily take down websites by revoking certificates issued by let’s encrypt? How obvious can it be? I wondered the same thing as OP months ago. We need european alternatives. I think there are some, have some bookmarked somewhere.
Certificate revocation is a joke and has been for over a decade
Huh, FF on Android doesn’t care.
Most browsers don’t, hence my calling revocation a joke.
So many in this thread are up in arms about something the majority of browsers don’t care about and have actively ignored for as long as I can recall
And what if you need to get a new certificate?
You go to a different CA
That’s the question of this thread. Yes.
Aren’t we back at OP’s question?
What risk are you trying to mitigate, specifically?
If it’s the CA taking over your site, control over your CA specifically doesn’t really give any advantage to an attacker (they would have to hijack traffic and provide a new certificate - nobody will notice if the certificate is from a different CA).
Note that your CA cannot decrypt the exchanges between your server and its clients.
It opens the possibility of a man-in-the-middle attack.
which is still there if you are not using lets encrypt, because they can strongarm them to make a fake cert for your domain, and install a proxy repackaging HTTPS traffic with the fake certificate. all browsers trust the lets encrypt root certificate, so they won’t see anything suspicious.
the only thing there today to detect this (but not avoid) is certificate transparency logs. all modern certificates are required to be added to this log, for the CA to remain compliant. but browsers are not checking the logs, that would be a lot of additional traffic and how do they decide if a certificate was created maliciously? also, lets encrypt could afford being noncompliant, browser vendors can’t realistically just distrust their root certificate, many sites would become inaccessible.
Maybe I’m mistaken but aren’t the logs cryptography verifiable? (As in you can’t create a rouge cert without it creating a trace)
Yep, that’s what I described and any CA accepted by the client can do it
Are you sure they can’t decrypt? They have your certificate after all.Besides, if the Orange has a bad day, he can ban certificates export or just for a single company or individual.Edit: First two sentences were stupid, I apologize.
The CA cannot decypt: they don’t have the secret key which only the server has. When requesting a new certificate from the CA, the server generated a secret key (aka private key) and then generated a derived public key that goes into a Certificate Signing Request (CSR). The CSR is what the CA receives, not the secret key, and then the CA returns the certificate file to the server, which has been endorsed by the CA and thus trusted by the user base.
Phrased another way, a certificate is the instrument that confirms that a purported public key can in-fact be safely used, and that no MITM attack is happening (assuming you trust the CA that signed the cert). But once you’ve confirmed the public key, the rest of the cryptography is public key cryptography, meaning the secrecy of the secret key is the whole game.
Yes, the private key never leaves your machine.
You send them a certificate signing request with your public key, they put their verification stamp on it and send it to you.
The only part they have to play is verifying that your certificate is trusted by a root certificate.
I don’t think anyone is gonna solve that problem until it’s actually a problem.
It is a problem, and there are solutions.
You need to restructure your priorities.
Or use a ca, vps and dns provider that’s hostile to the west.
It’s not a question of supporting “freedom” and if you insist that it is, I will gladly provide all those services to you for a slight markup (price of freedom!).
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters CA (SSL) Certificate Authority DNS Domain Name Service/System ISP Internet Service Provider VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)
[Thread #107 for this comm, first seen 19th Sep 2026, 15:40] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
@Sibbo I do not see any problem with Letsencrypt. Any CA which is widely trusted has to follow the same rules. This rules are set up by the CA Browser Forum. Which metadata does LE collect? My server’s IP address, domain and subdomain, mail address. These are logged in the CT logs. Every CA has to log all certificates in a public CT log. Regardless which CA I choose, these data are public. There are not any critical data or metadata that LE can collect.
Actually the problem is that they are too widespread. if something happened, and they started creating fake certificates, for outside force or otherwise, they can’t just be blocked because literally half of the internet or more breaks. what’s worse, if browser vendors trued that, people would be downgrading their browser to the last version accepting it, and become exposed to publicly revealed security vulnerabilities. not all because its a bit complicated, but enough would do to have it cause an even greater problem.
You do make a good point. However, Let’s encrypt is run by the IRSG which is a non profit focused on improving internet security. They are the ones who are pushing for shorter certificate lifetimes among other things.
Letsencrypt can be directly forced to revoke certificates by the US. Organisations outside of the US are less vulnerable against that.
And ICAAN can hand your domain over to US law enforcement regardless of the TLD and your register.
Is that also part of your decision tree?
This is why I never even started using Letsencrypt; looking at the fine print, you actually enter into some kind of contract
with some US entityunder US law, which I don’t want even if it’s the coolest of all FOSS foundations.Here’s a site that has some info:
https://www.eurotoolkit.eu/categories/certificate-authority-ca
I have used certum.pl for years and it looks like I might go back to them soon because my VPS provider doesn’t offer bundled certs anymore.I used to pay €40/year iirc.
I suspect it’s gotten more expensive though.edit:
oh looks like ZeroSSL are doing it letsencrypt-style with Acme protocol for €0.edit2:
No, not more expensive. Some of the providers in the above link are labyrinthine and I couldn’t even find a Pricing section - usually a sign that it’s too expensive at least for a normal consumer - but others offer yearly certs for as little as €30 (taxes not included).edit3:
Yeah some people are going to have a hard time accepting that a contract with a for-profit company under EU jurisdiction might be preferable to a contract with a non-profit under US jurisdiction.I’ve been using ZeroSSL for over 5 years and can attest that they are friendly in that I have literally never seen or heard from them.
I’ve set up and cancelled multiple domains in this time, and have had one domain running for the entirety of my time with ZeroSSL.
I don’t think you (OP) are gonna find much better than a for-profit business with a good track record if you’re unwilling to use Letsencrypt.
ZeroSSL costs 180 per year for unlimited 90 day certs. I get the independence from US-based services, but I don’t want to drop that kind of money on my toy domains.
I think you misunderstood something there; they’re very explicitely offering free certs.
I just went 90% through the process (I might need them anyhow later this year), it’s like this:
What you say is a PRO feature, unlimited certs with one account, is not meant as “unlimited in time” but “unlimited number of certs at any given time”.Yeah, that’s what I meant. An unlimited number of 90 day certs, automatically renewable through ACME. That’s what Let’s Encrypt offers and that’s what I’d need in another cert provider.
lol ok
It’s proven then: Letsencrypt is bigger and better than anything any European even for profit company has to offer.
WTF are you on about?
Simi-related fun fact.
The biggest contributor to TOR is the CIA. They funded it’s creation and are primarily responsible for maintaining it to this day.
The CIA maintains TOR as a way for spies to pass information over the internet. They make it public because if only spies used TOR it would be trivial to catch them. So it’s in their interest that it be public and secure. It’s open source and security experts agree you can trust it.
So since this, according yo you, is a fact, I do suppose you have evidence to this claim? And I’m talking evidence that can be corroborated, not a Facebook post or something from a conspiracy sub, and not “oh man, everybody knows this!” because everybody doesn’t know this.
Crazy that you’re downvoted for asking for sources lol
There’s a thing called search engines, it takes about 20 seconds, much less than waiting for a reply you asked for in a mocking tone. What about “security analysis tor protocol”?
The CIA, not navy intelligence?
The core principle of Tor, known as onion routing, was developed in the mid-1990s by United States Naval Research Laboratory employees, mathematician Paul Syverson, and computer scientists Michael G. Reed and David Goldschlag, to protect American intelligence communications online.
I thougnt it was the Navy, not CIA itself
Lost Lemmings?
