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Paid SSL vs Letsencrypt (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/selfhosted

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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?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

So, the web uses a system called chain of trust. There are public keys stored in your system or browser that are used to validate the public keys given to you by various web sites.

Both letsencrypt and traditional SSL providers work because they have keys on your system in the appropriate place so as to deem them trustworthy.

All that to say, you're always trusting a certificate authority on some level unless you're doing self signed certificates... And then nobody trusts you.

The main advantage to a paid cert authority is a bit more flexibility and a fancier certificate for your website that also perhaps includes the business name.

Realistically... There's not much of a benefit for the average website or even small business.