this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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[–] [email protected] 108 points 6 days ago (3 children)

I understand their reasoning behind this, but I am not sure, this is such a good idea. Imagine Letsencrypt having technical issues or getting DDoS'd. If the certificates are valid for 90 days and are typically renewed well in advance, no real problem arises, but with only 6 days in total, you really can't renew them all that much in advance, so this risk of lots of sites having expired certificates in such a situation appears quite large to me.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 days ago (2 children)

That's true, but it would also have to be a serious attack for LE to be down for 3 entire days. There are multiple providers for automated certs, so you could potentially just switch if needed.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Most companies are not really suited for instant switching to a different cert service.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Most companies weren't suited for automatic certs either, but now they are

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

The attack would only need to last for a day or two, and then everyone requesting updated certs when it stops could push enough people outside the 6-day window to cause problems. 6 days is probably long enough to not be a huge issue, but it's getting close to problematic. Maybe change to 15 days, which should avoid the whole issue (people could update once/week and still have a spare week and a day to catch issues).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I volunteer to help with IT at a makerspace, and I hesitate to go for 6 day expiration times. As volunteers, we can't always fix problems in a timely way like paid IT staff could. We try to automate the hell out of everything, but certs have gone a day or two without getting updated before.