Let’s Encrypt gets support for multi-perspective validation

Let’s Encrypt will introduce support for multi-perspective validation this year. This is to prevent malicious parties from deceiving the domain check validation and being wrongly awarded a certificate.

Let’s Encrypt still validates from a single network perspective. That’s standard for certificate authorities, according to the organization. If a malicious person abuses a network route, a certificate for a domain could potentially be incorrectly issued. This could be, for example, after a man-in-the-middle attack via a bgp hijacking.

Anyone who has control over a border gateway protocol router can in principle announce any route, which routers are connected to to other routers. The lack of authentication at bgp leads to potential abuse and other problems. According to Let’s Encrypt, multi-perspective validation offers a solution for the certificate assignment, because then it is validated from the perspective of different Autonomous Systems and an attacker must therefore hijack multiple routes for a successful attack.

Let’s Encrypt expects further growth this year to probably 120 million active certificates and 215 million fully qualified domains. At the beginning of February, the counter stood at 92 million active certificates and 157 million qualified domains.