No sane system administrator is going to run a root-privilege program to reconfigure his web server and set-up SSL:
The Let’s Encrypt client is essentially an operating system component. Generically, it requires root privileges to bind to port 443 and (if requested) to reconfigure your webserver for certificate installation and renewal
That also seems like a perfect compromise vector for bad actors to modify the client software.
The Let's Encrypt effort is noble and definitely required but I think they would have been better-focused and quicker to market had they concentrated on establishing themselves as a CA first and leaving the 'auto-configuration magic' to a later stage, for the small subset of users who want that.
I don't understand how this is any worse than any other of the thousands of pieces that you run on your server. If you audit the code and it looks fine, and it's coming signed from a trusted source, what's the problem? It's not even a daemon, it just runs for a few seconds and exits.
The Let’s Encrypt client is essentially an operating system component. Generically, it requires root privileges to bind to port 443 and (if requested) to reconfigure your webserver for certificate installation and renewal
That also seems like a perfect compromise vector for bad actors to modify the client software.
The Let's Encrypt effort is noble and definitely required but I think they would have been better-focused and quicker to market had they concentrated on establishing themselves as a CA first and leaving the 'auto-configuration magic' to a later stage, for the small subset of users who want that.