this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2025
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344
Decreasing Certificate Lifetimes to 45 Days (letsencrypt.org)
submitted 1 day ago by artiman@piefed.social to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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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.

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[–] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 99 points 1 day ago (26 children)

So what's the floor here realistically, are they going to lower it to 30 days, then 14, then 2, then 1? Will we need to log in every morning and expect to refresh every damn site cert we connect to soon?

It is ignoring the elephant in the room -- the central root CA system. What if that is ever compromised?

Certificate pinning was a good idea IMO, giving end-users control over trust without these top-down mandated cert update schedules. Don't get me wrong, LetsEncrypt has done and is doing a great service within the current infrastructure we have, but ...

I kind of wish we could just partition the entire internet into the current "commercial public internet" and a new (old, redux) "hobbyist private internet" where we didn't have to assume every single god-damned connection was a hostile entity. I miss the comraderie, the shared vibe, the trust. Yeah I'm old.

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 87 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Will we need to log in every morning and expect to refresh every damn site cert we connect to soon?

Automate your certificate renewals. You should be automating updates for security anyway.

[–] dan@upvote.au 44 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

This is one of the reasons they're reducing the validity - to try and convince people to automate the renewal process.

That and there's issues with the current revocation process (for incorrectly issued certificates, or certificates where the private key was leaked or stored insecurely), and the most effective way to reduce the risk is to reduce how long any one certificate can be valid for.

A leaked key is far less useful if it's only valid or 47 days from issuance, compared to three years. (note that the max duration was reduced from 3 years to 398 days earlier this year).

From https://www.digicert.com/blog/tls-certificate-lifetimes-will-officially-reduce-to-47-days:

In the ballot, Apple makes many arguments in favor of the moves, one of which is most worth calling out. They state that the CA/B Forum has been telling the world for years, by steadily shortening maximum lifetimes, that automation is essentially mandatory for effective certificate lifecycle management.

The ballot argues that shorter lifetimes are necessary for many reasons, the most prominent being this: The information in certificates is becoming steadily less trustworthy over time, a problem that can only be mitigated by frequently revalidating the information.

The ballot also argues that the revocation system using CRLs and OCSP is unreliable. Indeed, browsers often ignore these features. The ballot has a long section on the failings of the certificate revocation system. Shorter lifetimes mitigate the effects of using potentially revoked certificates. In 2023, CA/B Forum took this philosophy to another level by approving short-lived certificates, which expire within 7 days, and which do not require CRL or OCSP support.

[–] Passerby6497@lemmy.world 13 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

note that the max duration was reduced from 3 years to 398 days earlier this year)

2020 really has been the longest year of my life

[–] dan@upvote.au 4 points 19 hours ago

Oh... Oops. Hahaha

[–] billwashere@lemmy.world 5 points 20 hours ago (3 children)

But can you imagine the load on their servers should it come to this? And god forbid it goes down for a few hours and every person in the world is facing SSL errors because Let’s Encrypt can’t create new ones.

This continued shortening of lifespans on these certs is untenable at best. Personally I have never run into a situation where a cert was stolen or compromised but obviously that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. I also feel like this is meant to automate all cert production which is nice if you can. Right now, at my job, all cert creation requires manually generating a CSR, submit it to a website, wait for manager approval, and then wait for creation. Then go download the cert and install it manually.

If I have to do this everyday for all my certs I’m not going to be happy. Yes this should be automated and central IT is supposed to be working on it but I’m not holding my breath.

[–] yggstyle@lemmy.world 4 points 12 hours ago (3 children)

I doubt they will drop below 1-2 weeks. Any service outage would turn into a ddos when service was restored.

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[–] JASN_DE@feddit.org 33 points 1 day ago (1 children)

So what's the floor here realistically, are they going to lower it to 30 days, then 14, then 2, then 1?

LE is beta-testing a 7-day validity, IIRC.

Will we need to log in every morning and expect to refresh every damn site cert we connect to soon?

No, those are expected or even required to be automated.

[–] dan@upvote.au 22 points 1 day ago (1 children)

7-day validity is great because they're exempt from OCSP and CRL. Let's Encrypt is actually trying 6-day validity, not 7: https://letsencrypt.org/2025/01/16/6-day-and-ip-certs

Another feature Let's Encrypt is adding along with this is IP certificates, where you can add an IP address as an alternate name for a certificate.

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[–] ByteJunk@lemmy.world 11 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Partition the internet... Like during the Morris worm of '88, where they had to pull off regional networks to prevent the machines from being reinfected?

The good old days were, maybe, not that good. :)

[–] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 4 points 11 hours ago

Well that could be considered the point where we lost our innocence, yeah. :(

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[–] dan@upvote.au 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The current plan is for the floor to be 47 days. https://www.digicert.com/blog/tls-certificate-lifetimes-will-officially-reduce-to-47-days, and this is not until 2029 in order to give people sufficient time to adjust. Of course, individual certificate authorities can choose to have lower validity periods than 47 days if they want to.

Essentially, the goal is for everyone to automatically renew the certificates once per month, but include some buffer time in case of issues.

[–] Ooops@feddit.org 7 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

Will we need to log in every morning and expect to refresh every damn site cert we connect to soon?

Certbot's default timer checks twice a day if it's old enough to be be due for a renewal... So a change from 90 to 1 day will in practice make no difference already...

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[–] probable_possum@leminal.space 39 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (2 children)

It's the "change your password often odyssey" 2.0. If it is safe, it is safe, it doesn't become unsafe after an arbitrary period of time (if the admin takes care and revokes compromised certs). If it is unsafe by design, the design flaw should be fixed, no?

Or am I missing the point?

[–] LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz 47 points 23 hours ago (10 children)

The point is, if the certificate gets stolen, there's no GOOD mechanism for marking it bad.

If your password gets stolen, only two entities need to be told it's invalid. You and the website the password is for.

If an SSL certificate is stolen, everyone who would potentially use the website need to know, and they need to know before they try to contact the website. SSL certificate revocation is a very difficult communication problem, and it's mostly ignored by browsers because of the major performance issues it brings having to double check SSL certs with a third party.

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[–] cron@feddit.org 28 points 22 hours ago (4 children)

Short lifespans are also great when domains change their owner. With a 3 year lifespan, the old owner could possibly still read traffic for a few more years.

When the lifespan ist just 30-90 days, that risk is significatly reduced.

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[–] Jozav@lemmy.world 34 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

Reducing the validity timespan will not solve the problem, it only reduces the risk. And how big is that risk really? I'm an amateur and would love to see some real malicious case descriptions that would have been avoided had the certificate been revoked earlier...

Anybody have some pointers?

[–] groet@feddit.org 15 points 13 hours ago

Terminology: revoked means the issuer of the certificate has decided that the certificate should not be trusted anymore even though it is still valid.

If a attacker gets access to a certificates key, they can impersonate the server until the validity period of the cert runs out or it is revoked by the CA. However ... revocation doesn't work. The revocation lists arent checked by most clients so a stolen cert will be accepted potentially for a very long time.

The second argument for shorter certs is adoption of new technology so certs with bad cryptographic algorithms are circled out quicker.

And third argument is: if the validity is so short you don't want to change the certs manually and automate the process, you can never forget and let your certs expire.

We will probably get to a point of single day certs or even one cert per connection eventually and every step will be saver than before (until we get to single use certs which will probably fuck over privacy)

[–] RheumatoidArthritis@mander.xyz 6 points 17 hours ago

No, but I have a link showing how ISPs and CAs colluded to do a MITM https://notes.valdikss.org.ru/jabber.ru-mitm/

Shorter cert lifespan would not prevent this.

[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 4 points 17 hours ago

It really just helps in cases where you get hacked, but the hacker doesn't have continued access. Say someone physically penetrates into your building, grabs the key through an unlocked station, and leaves.

That being said, like you mentioned, if someone is going through this effort, 45 days vs 90 days likely won't matter. They'll probably have the data they need after a week anyways.

Encryption key theft really requires a secondary attack afterwards to get the encrypted data by getting into the middle and either decrypting or redirecting traffic. It's very much a state level/high-corporate attack, not some random group trying to make a few bucks.

[–] nialv7@lemmy.world 31 points 10 hours ago (8 children)

I'm sorry but if you aren't using automated renewals then you are not using let's encrypt the way it's intended to be used. You should take this as an opportunity to get that set up.

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[–] Passerby6497@lemmy.world 28 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

I've been dreading this switch for months (I still am, but I have been, too!) considering this year and next year will each double the amount of cert work my team has to do. But, I'm hopeful that the automation work I'm doing will pay off in the long run.

[–] non_burglar@lemmy.world 41 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Are you not using LE certbot to handle renewals? I can't even imagine doing this manually.

[–] Passerby6497@lemmy.world 28 points 21 hours ago (6 children)

Personally, yes. Everything is behind NPM and SSL cert management is handled by certbot.

Professionally? LOL NO. Shit is manual and usually regulated to overnight staff. Been working on getting to the point it is automated though, but too many bespoke apps for anyone to have cared enough to automate the process before me.

[–] groet@feddit.org 5 points 13 hours ago

One reason for the short certs is to push faster adoption of new technology. Yes that's about new cryptography in the certs but if you still change all your certs by hand maybe you need to be forced ...

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[–] imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

As some selfhosting novice who uses NPM with auto renewal - I feel that I shouln't be ocncerned.

[–] mjr@infosec.pub 14 points 20 hours ago

Check your autorenewal failure alerts go somewhere you'll react to.

[–] Prove_your_argument@piefed.social 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Reducing the valid time will not solve the underlying problems they are trying to fix.

We're just gonna see more and more mass outages over time especially if this reduces to an uncomfortably short duration. Imagine what might happen if a mass crowdflare/microsoft/amazon/google outage that goes on perhaps a week or two? what if the CAs we use go down longer than the expiration period?

Sure, the current goal is to move everybody over to ACME but now that's yet another piece of software that has to be monitored, may have flaws or exploits, may not always run as expected... and has dozens of variations with dependencies and libraries that will have various levels of security of their own and potentially more vulnerabilities.

I don't have the solution, I just don't see this as fixing anything. What's the replacement?

[–] fistac0rpse@fedia.io 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

clearly the most secure option is to have certificates that are only valid for 30 seconds at a time

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[–] angband@lemmy.world 15 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

minor panic, oh, "2028".

[–] OCT0PUSCRIME@programming.dev 12 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Might as well adjust the setting now. I had that same feeling for something they changed several years ago and never got around to changing it til all my stuff went down lol.

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[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (4 children)

And you still can't self certify.

It's cute the big players are so concerned with my little security of my little home server.

Or is there a bigger plan behind all this? Like pay more often, lock in to government controlled certs (already done I guess because they control DNS and you must have a "real" website name to get a free cert)?

I feel it's 50% security 50% bullshit.

Edit: thank you all I will dive down the CA certification rabbit hole now! Have worked in C++ & X509 on the client side so maybe I'll be able to figure it out.

[–] farcaller@fstab.sh 22 points 1 day ago (7 children)

You can absolutely run your own CA and even get your friends to trust it.

[–] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 21 hours ago

Yes you can but the practicality of doing so is very limiting. Hell I ran my own CA for my own internal use and even I found it annoying.

The entire CA ecosystem is terrible and only exists to ensure connections are encrypted at this point. There's no validation or any sort of authority to say one site is better than another.

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[–] stratself@lemdro.id 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Technically something like DANE can allow you to present DNSSEC-backed self-signed certs and even allow multi-domain matching that removes the need for SNI and Encrypted Client Hello... but until the browsers say it is supported, it's not

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[–] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

assuming "rest of the industry" in this context refers to ssl seller lobby.

[–] dan@upvote.au 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

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.

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[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 day ago (4 children)

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/

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