Today we announced a project that I’ve been working on for a while now – Let’s Encrypt. This is a new Certificate Authority (CA) that is intended to be free, fully automated, and transparent. We want to help make the dream of TLS everywhere a reality. See the official announcement blog post I wrote for more information.

Eric Rescorla and I decided to try to make this happen during the summer of 2012. We were trying to figure out how to increase SSL/TLS deployment, and felt that an innovative new CA would likely be the best way to do so. Mozilla agreed to help us out as our first major sponsor, and by May of 2013 we had incorporated Internet Security Research Group (ISRG). By September 2013 we had merged a similar project started by EFF and researchers from the University of Michigan into ISRG, and submitted our 501(c)(3) application. Since then we’ve put a lot of work into ISRG’s governance, found the right sponsors, and put together the plans for our CA, Let’s Encrypt.

I’ll be serving as ISRG’s Executive Director while we search for more permanent leadership. During this time I’ll remain with Mozilla.

Too many people to thank for their help here, many of whom work for our sponsors, but I want to call out Eric Rescorla (Mozilla) and Kevin Dick (Right Side Capital Management) in particular. Eric was my original co-conspirator, and Kevin has spent innumerable hours with me helping to create partnerships and the necessary legal infrastructure for ISRG. Both are incredible at what they do, and I’ve learned a lot from working with them.

Now it’s time to finish building the CA – lots of software to write, hardware to install, and auditing to complete. If you have relevant skills, we hope you’ll join us.

https://boomswaggerboom.wordpress.com/2014/11/18/lets-encrypt/