SSL certificates can be quite cheap these days, but nothing beats free, and in this post I will show you how to use Let’s Encrypt certificates with Nginx (back in early 2011, I wrote a post on the most common reasons why SSL isn’t turned on by default for all websites, so you may be interested in that post as well).

According to their website, Let’s encrypt – which entered public beta on December 3 – is

a new Certificate Authority: It’s free, automated, and open. Author Attribution

So this essentially means you can get valid, trusted TLS/SSL certificates for free. Besides the cost, one thing I really like of Let’s Encrypt is that it is so easy and quick to get a new certificate! Normally you’d have to generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) and a private key on the server, then send the CSR to a provider/Certificate Authority in order to get the actual certificate. In many cases, the certificate you receive from the provider is a bundle of several certificates that you have to combine into a single certificate you can then install on the server. You need to repeat the process each time you need to renew the certificate.

The process overall isn’t complicated but is made much easier and quicker with Let’s Encrypt. If you use Apache, everything is pretty much automated with the Let’s Encrypt python tools, in that the certificate will be generated and installed in Apache automatically for you. The same level of support for Nginx is still in the works, but generating a certificate you can install with Nginx as well is quite straightforward.

Let’s Encrypt certificates with Nginx

First, you need to clone the git repo which contains the python tools you will use to generate new certificates:

git clone https://github.com/letsencrypt/letsencrypt cd letsencrypt

Next, you need to stop Nginx before proceeding… I know this sounds like it may be a problem, but there is a reason for this will I will explain in a moment.

service nginx stop

Now you can run the python tool which will generate the certificate for you:

./letsencrypt-auto --agree-dev-preview --server https://acme-v01.api.letsencrypt.org/directory auth

This will require that you accept the terms and conditions and enter the domain or domains you need the certificate for. For example, you may want a certificate for a domain with and without the www subdomain.

Once the tool has done its stuff, you will find the new certificate in /etc/letsencrypt/live by default, with a directory for each domain which contains the following files:

cert.pem chain.pem fullchain.pem privkey.pem

The important files which you will use with Nginx are fullchain.pem and privkey.pem.

So open the relevant virtual host file (usually in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled) and add the following lines to the server block:

server { listen 443 ssl; server_name <domain name>; ssl on; ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/<domain name>/fullchain.pem; ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/<domain name>/privkey.pem; ... }

Of course replace domain name with the actual domain name (or names for the server_name directive if more than one, e.g. with and without www).

These are the minimum settings you need to add in order to enable https for your site, but I recommend you have a look at Mozilla’s SSL config generator for additional settings to improve the security of your setup. For example I’m currently using the following settings:

ssl_session_timeout 1d; ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:50m; ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2; ssl_ciphers "ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-DSS-AES128-GCM-SHA256:kEDH+AESGCM:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:DHE-DSS-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256:DHE-DSS-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES256-GCM-SHA384:AES128-SHA256:AES256-SHA256:AES128-SHA:AES256-SHA:AES:CAMELLIA:DES-CBC3-SHA:!aNULL:!eNULL:!EXPORT:!DES:!RC4:!MD5:!PSK:!aECDH:!EDH-DSS-DES-CBC3-SHA:!EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:!KRB5-DES-CBC3-SHA"; ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on; add_header Strict-Transport-Security max-age=15768000; ssl_stapling on; ssl_stapling_verify on;

Once you have completed the configuration, reload or restart Nginx and test the configuration with this service.

If all is configured properly you should get a very good score, e.g.:

Optionally, you may also want to redirect all the plain http traffic to the https ‘version’ of your site. To do this, just add another server block to the virtual hosts like the following:

server { listen 80; server_name <domain name>; rewrite ^/(.*) https://<domain name>/$1 permanent; }

So, why do you need to stop Nginx before generating a certificate with Let’s Encrypt? When you request a certificate with a typical provider, they need to verify that you own the domain and this is done, for example, by sending an email to an email address of that domain with a confirmation link. If you own the domain, of course you have access to that email address and therefore you can proceed with the next steps required to get the certificate.

With Let’s Encrypt, everything is automated but they still need to verify the ownership of the domain first. So when you run letsencrypt-auto, it starts an HTTP server listening to the port 80 and requests a certificate from Let’s Encrypt CA. The CA, in order to verify that you own the domain, makes an HTTP request to your domain, which of course will be served by letsencrypt-auto’s server, confirming that you own the domain. Because this HTTP server runs on the port 80, you can’t run your Nginx server on the port 80 at the same time, so while you generate a certificate with letsencrypt-auto you will need to stop Nginx first. It doesn’t take long to get a certificate but this may be a problem depending on the application, especially considering that -as we’ll see later- Let’s Encrypt certificates must be renewed every 90 days. There is a module for Apache that does all of this automatically without downtime, but as said the same support for Nginx is still in the works so in the meantime you will have to stop Nginx while generating the certificate. Please note that what I described is the easiest way to obtain and install a certificate with Let’s Encrypt, so there may be other ways to do this without downtime even with Nginx. Update: I found this which might be of interest.

Limitations

Unfortunately, Let’s Encrypt certificates come with some limitations:

only Domain Validation (DV) certificates are issued , so the browsers will show the padlock as expected. However Organisation Validation and Extended Validation certificates are not available and apparently Let’s Encrypt has no plans to offer these certificates because they require some human intervention and thus they cost money, so the generation of these certificate cannot be fully automated nor offered for free, which are the key features of Let’s Encrypt.

, so the browsers will show the padlock as expected. However Organisation Validation and Extended Validation certificates are not available and apparently Let’s Encrypt has no plans to offer these certificates because they require some human intervention and thus they cost money, so the generation of these certificate cannot be fully automated nor offered for free, which are the key features of Let’s Encrypt. wildcard certificates aren’t available either; you can get certificates for multiple subdomains though. This may be a problem with some applications.

either; you can get certificates for multiple subdomains though. This may be a problem with some applications. certificates expire in 90 days , which seems a bit too short. See this for an explanation.

, which seems a bit too short. See this for an explanation. there is a limit of 5 certificates for a registered domain in 7 days ; this limit should be lifted when Let’s Encrypt is out of beta. So for example if you request separate certificates for mydomain.com, www.mydomain.com and mail.mydomain.com these will be counted as 3 certificates for the same domain. But of course you can request a certificate with multiple subdomains at once.

; this limit should be lifted when Let’s Encrypt is out of beta. So for example if you request separate certificates for mydomain.com, www.mydomain.com and mail.mydomain.com these will be counted as 3 certificates for the same domain. But of course you can request a certificate with multiple subdomains at once. all major browsers are supported, but some devices don’t recognise these certificates. See this list for more info.

Even with these limitations, Let’s Encrypt is an exciting initiative and it is likely that things will improve when LE is out of beta. It’s a great service because by offering free certificates that are also easier to obtain, it will surely speed up the adoption of TLS/SSL encryption, making for a more secure web.

I don’t have any particular reasons for enabling encryption on all pages on this blog since it doesn’t manage any user data and I am outsourcing comments to Disqus, but I am planning on switching anyway because another added benefit of https is that it helps increase search engine raking.

So if you haven’t yet, check Let’s Encrypt out!