The EFF's 'Let's Encrypt' Plans Wildcard Certificates For Subdomains (letsencrypt.org)

Long-time Slashdot reader jawtheshark shares an announcement from the EFF's free, automated, and open TLS certificate authority at LetsEncrypt.org: Let's Encrypt will begin issuing [free] wildcard certificates in January of 2018... A wildcard certificate can secure any number of subdomains of a base domain (e.g. *.example.com). This allows administrators to use a single certificate and key pair for a domain and all of its subdomains, which can make HTTPS deployment significantly easier.
58% of web traffic is now encrypted, Let's Encrypt reports, crediting in part the 47 million domains they've secured since December of 2015. "Our hope is that offering wildcards will help to accelerate the Web's progress towards 100% HTTPS," explains their web page, noting that they're announcing the wild card certificates now in conjunction with a request for donations to support their work.

Comments

Do you have any idea what you're talking about?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I have to ask, are you just playing dumb in some failed attempt to be "funny" or "sarcastic", or are you really just ignorant about how these sorts of digital certs actually work?

Are you really unaware of the differences between Domain Validated Certificates and Extended Validation Certificates? Are you unaware of how they're obtained? Are you unaware of how modern browsers indicate the use of such certificates to the browser's user?

I really hope you're just trying to joke around, but failed miserably.

What the fuck are you talking about?!?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Although being able to create a wildcard cert is interesting indeed. At least I will only need to have one cert reissued every 90 days instead of five.

LOL! It's very clear that you have never actually used Let's Encrypt. It supports the subject alt name extension so that one cert can be used for multiple hosts.

Fuck, just look at Slashdot's cert, if you're browsing this site using HTTPS. The Let's Encrypt provided cert I'm seeing used here has a CN of slashdot.org, but it also supports these names:

apache.slashdot.org
api.slashdot.org
apple.slashdot.org
ask.slashdot.org
askslashdot.slashdot.org
awards.slashdot.org
back.slashdot.org
backslash.slashdot.org
bi.slashdot.org
books.slashdot.org
bsd.slashdot.org
build.slashdot.org
cc.slashdot.org
classic.slashdot.org
cloud.slashdot.org
cmdrtaco.slashdot.org
datacenter.slashdot.org
design.slashdot.org
developers.slashdot.org
devices.slashdot.org
entertainment.slashdot.org
features.slashdot.org
games.slashdot.org
hardware.slashdot.org
idle.slashdot.org
images-ssl.slashdot.org
images.slashdot.org
info.slashdot.org
interviews.slashdot.org
it.slashdot.org
jobs.slashdot.org
library.slashdot.org
linux.slashdot.org
m.slashdot.org
mac.slashdot.org
meta.slashdot.org
mobile.slashdot.org
news.slashdot.org
newsletter.slashdot.org
partnervideo.slashdot.org
politics.slashdot.org
polls.slashdot.org
radio.slashdot.org
science.slashdot.org
search.slashdot.org
slashdot.org
tacohell.slashdot.org
tech.slashdot.org
technology.slashdot.org
tv.slashdot.org
www.apple.slashdot.org
www.hardware.slashdot.org
www.news.slashdot.org
www.slashdot.org
www.tech.slashdot.org
yro.slashdot.org

So I don't know what the fuck you're doing talking about "5 certs". You must not know, either!

I know the quality of the people around here has really decreased over time, but you're taking it to a whole new level of incompetence.

Please, at least have some small idea about what you're talking about before you start shitting out nonsense!