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Project ideas from Hacker News discussions.

6-Day and IP Address Certificates Are Generally Available

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

1. Landscape of ACME Client Support

Most users are focused on which ACME clients currently support IP address certificates. There is a clear list of supported clients, but the level of support varies, and some clients are still in development.

"Some ACME clients that I think currently support IP addresses are acme.sh, lego, traefik, acmez, caddy, and cert-manager. Certbot support should hopefully land pretty soon." — mcpherrinm "IPv4 certs are already working fine for me in Caddy, but I think there's some kinks to work out with IPv6." — jsheard

2. Practical Use Cases and Benefits

The primary motivation for using IP certificates is to decouple TLS from DNS, enabling secure communications for ephemeral services, internal networks, or situations where domain name provisioning is a bottleneck.

"I am guessing the use case for ip address certs is so your ephemeral services can do TLS communication, but now you don't need to depend on provisioning a record on the name server as well for something that you might be start hundreds or thousands of, that will only last for like an hour or day." — iamrobertismo "One thing this can be useful for is encrypted client hello (ECH), the way TLS/HTTPS can be used without disclosing the server name to any listening devices... With IP certificates, the outer TLS connection can just use the IP address in its readable SNI field and encrypt the actual hostname for the real connection." — jeroenhd

3. Debates Over Certificate Lifetimes and Operational Risk

There is significant discussion and concern regarding the short 6-day lifetime for IP certificates. Some users view it as an operational burden and a "single point of failure" risk, while others defend it as necessary due to IP transience and to support faster revocation.

"The push for shorter and shorter cert lifetimes is a really poor idea, and indicates that the people working on these initiatives have no idea how things are done in the wider world." — bigstrat2003 "I'm certain there are some who need this, but it's not me." — qwertox "The short-lived requirement seems pretty reasonable for IP certs as IP addresses are often rented and may bounce between users quickly... 6 days actually seems like a long time for this situation!" — kevincox

4. Concerns Over Centralization of Trust

Discussions often expand to critique the broader WebPKI system. Users express skepticism about the authority of Certificate Authorities, the influence of browser vendors, and the resilience of the trust model against geopolitical risks.

"You could argue that The Don in charge of the US is in control of letsencrypt... There's much more risk of state-sponsored cyber attacks against US companies." — cpach "TLS certs should be treated much more akin to SSH host keys in the known hosts file. Browsers should record the cert the first time they see it and then warn me if it changes before it's expiration date, or some time near the expiration date." — wang_li

🚀 Project Ideas

Automated IP Certificate Renewal Monitor & Fallbacker

Summary

  • [A tool that continuously monitors ACME clients' ability to obtain IP certificates and automatically fails over to a backup ACME provider if the primary one fails or issues a certificate that expires too soon.]
  • [Ensures high availability for services relying on short-lived IP certificates by removing dependency on a single ACME provider.]

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Self-hosters, small businesses, and DevOps engineers managing IP certificate dependent services.
Core Feature Health checks, ARI (ACME Renewal Information) parsing, and multi-CA failover logic for IP cert renewal.
Tech Stack Go/Rust (CLI/Daemon), Docker, Prometheus (optional metrics).
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Hobby (Open source)

Notes

  • [Addresses the fear of "Certificate expiration without a way to refresh" due to a single CA (like Let's Encrypt) failing. As "bflesch" noted, "Is there someone at the top of the certificate chain who can refuse to give out further certificates within the blink of an eye?" and "cpach" confirmed that configuring fallback CAs is the solution.]
  • [Practical utility for anyone worried about the resilience of the WebPKI system for their IP-backed services.]

IP Certificate CLI Wizard & Simulator

Summary

  • [A user-friendly CLI tool that abstracts away the complexity of tools like lego for obtaining IP certificates, specifically handling the nuances of IPv6, HTTP-01 vs. DNS-01 challenges for IPs, and simulating the validation process before execution.]
  • [Solves the friction and "effort" required to find the correct commands for IP certificates, as highlighted by users struggling with lego and certbot support status.]

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Developers, hobbyists, and network engineers new to IP certificates.
Core Feature Interactive wizard for domain/IP selection, challenge method, and profile selection (e.g., shortlived); dry-run mode.
Tech Stack Go (wrapping lego library), CLI framework (e.g., Cobra).
Difficulty Low
Monetization Hobby (Open source)

Notes

  • [Directly addresses "ivanr"'s comment: "you can use lego... but figuring out the exact command line took me some effort yesterday."]
  • [Utility is high for onboarding new users to the feature, lowering the barrier to entry for testing or using IP certs.]

Private Network Certificate Service (IP Cert Proxy)

Summary

  • [A service that acts as a middleman for public CAs, obtaining certificates for publicly routable IPs and then issuing internal certificates for private IP ranges (e.g., 192.168.x.x) signed by a private CA root distributed to internal devices.]
  • [Solves the "alibarber" problem: "If you and I (and everyone else) can legitimately get a certificate for 10.0.0.1, then what are you proving exactly?" by creating a hierarchical trust model for private networks.]

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Home lab enthusiasts, corporate IT managing internal tools, LAN gamers.
Core Feature Bridge public IP validation to private PKI issuance; automatic root distribution (e.g., via MDM or config).
Tech Stack Python/Go, OpenSSL, internal web UI.
Difficulty High (Security sensitive)
Monetization Revenue-ready: Freemium (Free for single root, paid for enterprise AD/LDAP integration).

Notes

  • [Addresses the realization that public CAs won't issue for private IPs, as "cpach" states: "A public CA won’t give you a cert for 10.0.0.1." This tool bridges that gap for internal security needs.]
  • [High practical utility for secure internal communications without exposing services to the internet.]

Certificate Expiration "Time-Shift" Simulator

Summary

  • [A testing tool that simulates the behavior of ACME clients and browsers when certificates have very short lifetimes (like 6 days), allowing users to test renewal failure scenarios and "debugging window" effectiveness without waiting actual days.]
  • [Solves the anxiety and operational risk described by "qwertox": "If something goes wrong... I won't have time to fix this. So I'd be at a two day renewal with a 4 day debugging window."]

Details

Key Value
Target Audience System administrators, SREs, and DevOps teams adopting short-lived certificates.
Core Feature Time-warping environment for ACME clients; automated "what-if" failure injection; reporting on debugging window adequacy.
Tech Stack Docker (containerized time), Python/Go, Selenium/Playwright (for browser simulation).
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Hobby (Open source)

Notes

  • [Helps operationalize the shift to shorter cert lifetimes discussed by "cpach" and "mcpherrinm". It validates the "4 day debugging window" concern raised by "qwertox" in a safe environment.]
  • [Utility is high for migration planning to 47-day or 6-day certificates, ensuring pipelines are robust.]

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