Certbot 4.0: Long Live Short-Lived Certs!

EFF update
1 week 2 days ago

When Let’s Encrypt, a free certificate authority, started issuing 90 day TLS certificates for websites, it was considered a bold move that helped push the ecosystem towards shorter certificate life times. Beforehand, certificate authorities normally issued certificate lifetimes lasting a year or more. With 4.0, Certbot is now supporting Let’s Encrypt’s new capability for six day certificates through ACME profiles and dynamic renewal at:

  • 1/3rd of lifetime left
  • 1/2 of lifetime left, if the lifetime is shorter than 10 days

There’s a few, significant reasons why shorter lifetimes are better:

  • If a certificate's private key is compromised, that compromise can't last as long.
  • With shorter life spans for the certificates, automation is encouraged. Which facilitates robust security of web servers.
  • Certificate revocation is historically flaky. Lifetimes 10 days and under prevent the need to invoke the revocation process and deal with continued usage of a compromised key.

There is debate on how short these lifetimes should be, but with ACME profiles you can have the default or “classic” Let’s Encrypt experience (90 days) or start actively using other profile types through Certbot with the --preferred-profile and --required-profile flags. For six day certificates, you can choose the “shortlived” profile.

These new options are just the beginning of the modern features the ecosystem can support and we are glad to have dynamic renewal times to start leveraging a more agile web that facilitates better security and flexible options for everyone. Thank you to the community and the Certbot team for making this happen!

Love ♥️ Certbot as much as us? Donate today to support this work.

Alexis Hancock

【焦点】トランプ課税で世界はキナ臭さが漂う＝橋詰雅博

日本ジャーナリストクラブ（JCJ）
1 week 3 days ago
　「投資の神様」と称される著名投資家、米国のウォーレン・バフェット氏（９４）は最近のCBSニュースのインタビューで関税は「ある程度の戦争行為」「すぐに血を流すことはないかもしれないが、間違いなく報復を招く侵略行為だ」と語った。　その代表例として共和党のフーヴァー大統領の下で１９３０年に法制化されたスムートホーリー関税法を上げた。高関税によって国内産業を保護して高賃金を維持することで世界恐慌を克服しようとした。　しかし米国が保護貿易主義に転じたことに対し、英国、フランス、オラン..
ＪＣＪ

Congress Takes Another Step Toward Enabling Broad Internet Censorship

EFF update
1 week 3 days ago

The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday advanced the TAKE IT DOWN Act (S. 146) , a bill that seeks to speed up the removal of certain kinds of troubling online content. While the bill is meant to address a serious problem—the distribution of non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII)—the notice-and-takedown system it creates is an open invitation for powerful people to pressure websites into removing content they dislike. 

As we’ve written before, while protecting victims of these heinous privacy invasions is a legitimate goal, good intentions alone are not enough to make good policy. 

take action

TELL CONGRESS: "Take It Down" Has No real Safeguards  

This bill mandates a notice-and-takedown system that threatens free expression, user privacy, and due process, without meaningfully addressing the problem it claims to solve. The “takedown” provision applies to a much broader category of content—potentially any images involving intimate or sexual content at all—than the narrower NCII definitions found elsewhere in the bill. The bill contains no protections against frivolous or bad-faith takedown requests. Lawful content—including satire, journalism, and political speech—could be wrongly censored. 

The legislation’s 48-hour takedown deadline means that online service providers, particularly smaller ones, will have to comply quickly to avoid legal risks. That time crunch will make it impossible for services to verify the content is in fact NCII. Instead, services will rely on automated filters—infamously blunt tools that frequently flag legal content, from fair-use commentary to news reporting.

Communications providers that offer users end-to-end encrypted messaging, meanwhile, may be served with notices they simply cannot comply with, given the fact that these providers cannot view the contents of messages on their platforms. Platforms may respond by abandoning encryption entirely in order to be able to monitor content—turning private conversations into surveilled spaces. 

While several committee Members offered amendments to clarify these problematic provisions in the bill during committee consideration, committee leadership rejected all attempts to amend the bill. 

The TAKE IT DOWN Act is now expected to receive a floor vote in the coming weeks before heading to President Trump’s desk for his signature. Both the President himself and First Lady Melania Trump have been vocal supporters of this bill, and they have been urging Congress to quickly pass it. Trump has shown just how the bill can be abused, saying earlier this year that he would personally use the takedown provisions to censor speech critical of the president.

take action

TELL CONGRESS: "Take It Down" Has No real Safeguards  

Fast tracking a censorship bill is always troubling. TAKE IT DOWN is the wrong approach to helping people whose intimate images are shared without their consent. We can help victims of online harassment without embracing a new regime of online censorship.

Congress should strengthen and enforce existing legal protections for victims, rather than opting for a broad takedown regime that is ripe for abuse. 

Tell your Member of Congress to oppose censorship and to oppose S. 146.

India McKinney