Let’s Encrypt Starts Offering Free Wildcard SSL Certificates that Work with Multiple Sub-domains

Let’s Encrypt started issuing free Wildcard SSL certificate from yesterday through their updated version of ACME protocol Automated Certificate Management Environment ACMEv2.

Wildcard SSL certificates are more expensive ones than the regular single domain SSL certificates, a wildcard certificate for the domain name *.gbhackers.com could cover gbhackers.com, www.gbhackers.com, test.gbhackers.com.

Also Read testssl.sh – Tool to check cryptographic flaws and TLS/SSL Ciphers on any Ports

The free Wildcard SSL certificate will be issued starting from the ACMEv2 environment “if you are having ACME v2 Compatible Clients then to request a wildcard certificate simply send a wildcard DNS identifier in the new order request”.

Here is the list of ACME v2 Compatible Clients and the wildcard certificates are available via ACMEv2.

To get the free Wildcard SSL certificate the domain validation needs to be completed using the DNS-01 validation method, this means you should modify the TXT records to prove the ownership of the domain.

Let’s encrypt says that Authorizations held by a V1 account will not be usable in the V2 environment – you must revalidate your domains for use with ACME v2. Similar to ACMEv1.

According to Scotthelme’s recent Alexa Top 1 Million Analysis, the number of sites enforcing HTTPS increased at an impressive rate.With last Alexa Top, 1 Million websites Analysis HTTPS adoption increased by 32.30%.

Let’s encrypt had a very good progress as it breaks the technical and cost barriers, “We’re excited about the prospect of a 100% HTTPS Web and we’re working hard to get there” the statement reads.