Awesome

Get HTTPS for free!

This is a project that allows you to get a free HTTPS certificate without having to install any software or having to share your private keys with anyone. It uses the non-profit Let's Encrypt certificate authority to issue the free certificates. Hooray for free certs!

Donate

If this script is useful to you, please donate to the EFF. I don't work there, but they do fantastic work.

https://eff.org/donate/

How to use this website

Go to: https://gethttpsforfree.com

The website works by generating commands for you to run in your terminal, then making requests to the Let's Encrypt ACME API to issue your certificate. Simply visit the above website and follow the steps! If you don't know how to do something, try clicking the help links that explain how to complete the step. If you're still confused, please create an issue and I'll address your issue ASAP!

Requirements for your local machine:

openssl
echo

Requirements for your server:

python or any webserver that can serve a static file

These should all be installed by default in Linux and Mac OSX. If you're running Windows, you might need to install Cygwin to get openssl and echo working on Windows.

How this website works

This website works by making requests to the Let's Encrypt API (using the ACME protocol). There's 5 steps to the process, which are explained below. Also, I encourage you to read the source code (it's not that long) and pop open your browser's debugger to see the ajax requests that are going on. Please, audit this!

Step 1: Account Info

First, the ACME protocol requires you register a public key and contact information so you can sign all the requests you make to the API. In this step, you need to put in an email and a public key. The javascript for this section then converts the public key to a JSON Web Key (JWK). NOTE: currently only RSA 2048 and 4096 bit public keys are accepted by Let's Encrypt.

So if you paste it in this public key:

This step converts it to this JWK:

{
  "alg": "RS256",
  "jwk": {
    "e": "AQAB",
    "kty": "RSA",
    "n": "5aok6d72rkrGpOPAICSS3JPrA0tbVs3mYPWmG7c5tGEY-w1slyI-3V64NsLw8p9YqNLyX_YDsnmkOUMUx6Buvx43daBrl__wz3hIOvidXyV4z65Nbrlto9qtLpfi-9lbEEYt2PLhr-KjguqjqOQjqi2PgqdITGG-BZkU8xIrPzZCR_UPBotV_dGBj9vO1whTGlzpkihvXLf4rEFoJoEEeOPMtqbxUp1KS41EgX2xFav9JHPVI1hm66K0eqlJrBl407j3xRNlekl4xorwfCkAxC7xclofg3JZ7RIhv3DdaNe07IZ0QYup9dDufIcCKruAgu0hwYMwDHmZNrrWxMiaGQwagxs61mla6f7c1bvYY92PhfgpkQAN99MXdaTtvBbzDuY018QP-TVzzVH_hpjKaFx4JlYkcVGqbYamUiP7il4Hldqp6Mm65IH_8nxuZFrN4tJ5VyMeWeZ5sKBBrXZE1Je8524COYnvljGnaFAVaDRhAcTSEykveY8jx_r6MB95LkWcue7FXIQyX0D3_2lUKTu_wrBCmhriqNa4FHcccLMyQkiMbs8mEoldNCwYDxvF5lYc19UDlleE855lME00E_ogStmazzFrNWCzEJ-Pa9JVlTQonKRgWqi-9cWwV-AMd-s2F3wO-H2tlexe8pLoVw_42S44tHz4VuZuhpZvn3k"
  }
}

Step 2: Certificate Signing Request

Second, you need to specify the domains you want certificates for. That's done through a certificate signing request (CSR). The javascript in this section uses the ASN1.js library to parse the CSR and read the domains. NOTE: the private key for the domain cert cannot be the same as your account private key, according to ACME.

Step 3: Sign API Requests

Third, you need tell the Let's Encrypt API that you want to register and create an order for a certificate (your CSR). These requests must be signed with your account private key, so this steps compiles the request payloads that need signatures to get the domain challenges you need to fulfill.

Here's the list of requests that need to be made to the API:

/acme/new-acct - Register the account public key and accept the terms (discarded if already registered)
/acme/acct/... - Update the account with your email address
/acme/new-order - Creates a new order for a certificate for your domains in your CSR

NOTE: Each request also requires an anti-replay nonce, so the javascript gets those by making ajax requests to the /acme/new-nonce endpoint.

For each request the payload must be signed, and since this website doesn't ask for your private keys, you must copy-and-paste the signature commands into your terminal.

These commands are structured like this:

PRIV_KEY=./account.key; \                      #set the location of your account private key (change this location if different)
    echo -n "<request_payload_data>" | \       #pipe the payload into openssl
    openssl dgst -sha256 -hex -sign $PRIV_KEY  #sign the payload using your private key and output hex

Once these signatures are pasted back into the inputs, the javascript makes the ajax requests to the above endpoints for new-acct and each new-order. If the account public key has already been registered the new-acct response is a 204 No Content, which is ignored.

Step 4: Verify Ownership

The response for the /new-order has links to the authorization challenges needed prove you own the domain. The challenge that this website chooses is "http-01" or "dns-01", which requires that you host a specific file at a specific location or set a specific TXT value in your DNS for that domain. So, for each domain, this step shows you the file you need to host and the url you need to host it at.

After the file is being hosted, you need to tell Let's Encrypt to check the verify the challenge for that domain. That request must also be signed so there's one more signature that must be performed. The reason why this wasn't included in step 3 is because the payload contains something in the response of /new-order.

There's three options this website offers as copy-and-paste commands: python, file-based, and dns. The python command is a mini server you can copy-and-paste into your server's command line (NOTE: this needs sudo permissions!). The file-base option just lists the url where the challenge will check and the file contents that the file needs to contain. The DNS option lists the value you need to set as a TXT entry in your DNS. It's up to you to figure out how to make that happen.

When you confirm that you're hosting the files, an ajax request is made to the challenge url to tell Let's Encrypt to verify the domain. Once this is done for all the domains in your CSR, the final signature is to finalize the order and sign your certificate.

Step 5: Install Certificate

The response from finalizing should be your new certificate! Congrats! This step prints the certificate and also prints the intermediate certificate you need to chain this certificate to the root certificate.

Privacy

This website is entirely static files and only makes ajax requests to the Let's Encrypt API. It does not track or remember anything when you leave. It is written with minimal extra libraries and styling to ensure that you can read through and audit the source code.

Finally, since this website is completely static, it's un-hostable! Just right-click and "Save Page As...", save the complete website to your local computer, then open it in a browser. It still works when hosted locally!

Feedback/Contributing

I'd love to receive feedback, issues, and pull requests to make this script better. The main script itself, js/index.js, is less than 800 lines of code, so feel free to read through it! I tried to comment things well and make it crystal clear what it's doing.

TODO (pull requests welcome):

revoke.html - A page with steps for revoking certificates
~~Alternative file-based command instead of python server~~
~~Installation instructions for Apache~~
Accept GPG public keys as account public keys

What's NOT on the Roadmap

Third party libraries (asn1.js is the only one)
Fonts or images
CSS more than 5 kilobytes
Javascript that only changes UI
HTML that decreases source readability (added wrapping divs, etc.)

This website is supposed to work, nothing more.