All browsers now support Let’s Encrypt’s free SSL certificates

Users whose browsers do not want to open sites that use Let’s Encrypt’s free SSL certificates no longer have to manually adjust their settings to establish a secure connection to these sites.

All web browsers now support Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates. Josh Aas of the Internet Security Research Group reports that the initiative has now received cross-signatures from IdenTrust. The root certificate of IdenTrust is trusted by all major browsers and Let’s Encrypt can piggyback on this as an intermediate ca thanks to cross-signing.

Let’s Encrypt has set up a Hello World page to demonstrate that browsers can access the site via https without the user having to manually import the certificate. That was still necessary in mid-September, when the organization issued its first certificate. Both the Authority X1 and Authority X2 certificates are trusted by the browsers.

Let’s Encrypt is an initiative that aims to make as many sites as possible accessible via https, by providing free SSL certificates and facilitating their use. The project is part of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Encrypt the Web project. To this end, the EFF is collaborating with Mozilla, Cisco, Akamai, IdenTrust and researchers from the University of Michigan.