Let’s Encrypt will be reducing the validity period of the certificates we issue. We currently issue certificates valid for 90 days, which will be cut in half to 45 days by 2028.
This change is being made along with the rest of the industry, as required by the CA/Browser Forum Baseline Requirements, which set the technical requirements that we must follow. All publicly-trusted Certificate Authorities like Let’s Encrypt will be making similar changes. Reducing how long certificates are valid for helps improve the security of the internet, by limiting the scope of compromise, and making certificate revocation technologies more efficient.
assuming “rest of the industry” in this context refers to ssl seller lobby.
Yes, this requirement comes from the CA/Browser Forum, which is a group consisting of all the major certificate authorities (like DigiCert, Comodo/Sectigo, Let’s Encrypt, GlobalSign, etc) plus all the major browser vendors (Mozilla, Google, and Apple). Changes go through a voting process.
Google originally proposed 90 day validity, but Apple later proposed 47 days and they agreed to move forward with that proposal.
Don’t worry they’ll reduce the cost of certificates proportionally to the longevity of the certificate.
Right? Anybody?
<< Cricket noises >>
Edit: obviously not LE, but other certificate vendors.
Lol, never had to buy a cert huh?
You’re still buying a year or more at a time, no matter the lifetime of the cert itself. Even if the cert lifetime was a week, you’re still buying the same product, no matter how many times you rotate it.
Personally? No I’ve never bought a cert before. Given there’s free alternatives and it’s a homelab it doesn’t make sense. Otherwise I’ve used them on AWS, where ACM also just provides them for free.
What you’re saying is that certificate providers will still charge you and provide certificates for a year, but just provide you with N certificates to span that year?
E.g. if the duration is 45 days then they will give you 365/45 certificates ?
Minimum. We get through digicert at work, and we abuse the hell out of our wildcard and reissue it tons of times a year. You’re buying a service for the year, not an individual cert.
Interesting. Thanks for that insight :)
It’s being deiven by the browsers. Shorter certs mean less time for a compromised certificate to be causing trouble.
https://cabforum.org/working-groups/server/baseline-requirements/requirements/
most trouble is probably caused in the first few days. Doesn’t matter if it’s 45 or 90 days, it would have to be a few hours to be meaningfully short. Given that automating things like this is annoying sometimes, you’ll be sure people will max out the 45 days…
I’m pretty sure it’s the SSL seller lobby just wanting more money, tbh. Selling snake oil security.
I know from professional experience that this is a stupid as fuck idea that leads to outages. One of the many reasons I’m working to automate those annoying ones.
Also, don’t let perfect be the enemy of better.
And selling “certificate automation” tools.
Yeah you can still do a lot of damage in a few hours, but 45 days is a meaningful reduction in exposure time from year+