Let"s Encrypt, the free, automated, and open certificate authority, has passed another milestone. As of September 11th, the certificate authority has issued 10 million certificates, 5.3 million of which are still unexpired. Let"s Encrypt left its beta phase on April 12, meaning it has taken just under five months to reach the current level of issued certificates.
As more people begin to use Let"s Encrypt, the project wants more tech companies to "trust" the Let"s Encrypt root key (ISRG Root X1). Last month, it announced that the root key would be trusted by default in Firefox 50, which will ship before the end of the year. Josh Aas from Let"s Encrypt commented on the development saying:
“Acceptance into the Mozilla root program is a major milestone as we aim to rely on our own root for trust and have greater independence as a certificate authority (CA)...We have also applied to the Microsoft, Apple, Google, Oracle and Blackberry root programs. We look forward to acceptance into these programs as well.”
When Let"s Encrypt reached five million certificate issuances, the most popular Top Level Domain (TLD) that had been issued a Let"s Encrypt certificate was .com followed by "other" and .net, those three TLD"s are still leading but .com domains have extended their 9% lead in June to 12.3%.
On average, Let"s Encrypt is issuing about 65,000 new certificates every day, this means that it will reach 20 million issued certificates sometime in early 2017, likely in Q1.
Source: Let"s Encrypt | Image via Techfruit
