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?

  • cmnyboEnglish
    20·
    3 months ago

    If you are just self hosting for your own use, just stick with letsencrypt or self signed certificates.

    The paid certificates are for businesses where the users need to trust the certificate. They usually come with warranties and identity verification, which is important if you are accepting payments through your website, but it’s just a waste of money for personal use.

    • state_electricianEnglish
      51·
      3 months ago

      There is really no reason to use self-signed anymore. I use Let’s Encrypt even for 10.0.0.0/8 addresses.

      • N0x0n@lemmy.mlEnglish
        3·
        3 months ago

        Except for the learning process and if you want your self-signed local domains in your lan !

        https://jellyfin.homelab.domain is easier to access than IP addresses.

        • PlexSheep@infosec.pubEnglish
          4·
          3 months ago

          In that case, i recommend step-ca, which is a certificate authority server with acme support anyone can self host. The setup took a while but it’s been running for months now without problems for me.

          • N0x0n@lemmy.mlEnglish
            2·
            3 months ago

            Yeaaah I already played a bit arround with step-ca ! Right now a make a mini-CA with openssl.

            When I get more comfortable with how everything works together I will surely give step-ca another try.

            • PlexSheep@infosec.pubEnglish
              1·
              3 months ago

              I found open-ssl to be much harder to use. Do you just manually make new certificates with the CA in CLI?

        • state_electricianEnglish
          3·
          3 months ago

          I’ve been doing home networking for many years now and the public Domain + Cloudflare DNS + Let’s Encrypt is the easiest it’s ever been.

          • N0x0n@lemmy.mlEnglish
            1·
            3 months ago

            Can’t argue against that.

            However, I prefer local domain names accessible via Wireguard with self-signed certs. I like to understand how everything works under the hood !

            Also, I’m broke AF and buying a domain name (even cheap ones) are out of my budget :(.

            • qaz@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              3 months ago

              Numeric .xyz domains only cost $1 a year. They’re not great for things like mail because they’re often used by spammers (probably because of the price), but it’s great for cheap signed DNS hostnames.

              I point it to the server on my local network and use Wireguard to connect myself.