Let’s Encrypt Communication

In order to provide some transport security, we may want spawn an HTTPS server or maybe use SMTPS. We could use self-signed certificates, but this is not ideal. Clients become suspicious when the TLS alert pops up on their browser, or network proxies may drop the connection altogether. We want to use a certificate which is signed by a trusted root certificate authority. There are countless paid services which offer all manner of TLS certificates, but the easiest and most cost effective is Let’s Encrypt.

Let’s Encrypt, a root certificate authority trusted by most clients, allows server administrators to request free, domain-validated certificates for their hosts. Their mission is to help move us towards an encrypted internet, and free certificates is a great step forward.

Note

Let’s Encrypt provides free domain-validated certificates for hostnames and even wildcard certificates. More information can be found on https://letsencrypt.org/.

For demonstration purposes,...