Let’s Encrypt has issued ten million free SSL certificates

Let’s Encrypt has issued ten million free SSL certificates ten months after the start of the service. Approximately 5.4 million certificates are currently valid. The number of SSL certificates that have not expired has been around this number for several weeks.

On its statistics page, Let’s Encrypt reports that it has issued 9.98 million SSL certificates at the time of writing, but on Twitter the service says know that the 10 million mark has been crossed. The service began issuance in early December last year, in an open beta, and its millionth certificate was issued in early March.

The number of certificates in circulation that have not expired has fallen in recent days and is back at the number of August 24: 5.38 million. Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates expire after 90 days. The service wants to stimulate automatic renewal by system administrators and prevent misuse and other problems, such as loss or theft of keys.

The aim of the initiative is to give as many sites as possible https support by providing free SSL certificates and making implementation easier. In addition to the EFF, Mozilla, Cisco, Akamai, IdenTrust and researchers from the University of Michigan are working on the Encrypt the Web project.