EFF, Mozilla back new certificate authority that will offer free SSL certificates

A new organization supported by Mozilla, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others is working to set up a new certificate authority (CA) that will provide website owners with free SSL/TLS certificates.

The new CA will be called Let’s Encrypt and is expected to become operational in the second quarter of next year. It will be run by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG), a new California public-benefit corporation.

The goal of this effort is to get as many people as possible to use the TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocol — the more secure successor of SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) — said Josh Aas, executive director of ISRG. Aas is also a senior technology strategist at Mozilla.

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