Root Causes 242: Let's Encrypt Founder Peter Eckersley Passes

Hosted by

Fellow

Original broadcast date

September 16, 2022

Electronic Frontier Foundation member and Let's Encrypt co-founder Peter Eckersley passed away recently at a young age. In this episode we pay respect to Peter's memory and his many contributions, including ACME, Certbot, and Let's Encrypt.

Podcast transcript

Lightly edited for flow and brevity.

TCTim CallanSo, we like to have a lot of fun on this podcast. We laugh about things and things like that. This, unfortunately, I think is gonna be a somber one today because we are talking about something sad and unfortunate that happened in the world of cryptography and digital certificates that’s very important and in particular, I think we are talking about the sudden and too young death of Peter Eckersley.

Peter was an important member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation for a long time, and in particular, in the world of digital certificates, he is noteworthy for being one of the creators of Let’s Encrypt and a bunch of related technology services. And we all, I think we all know the importance that Let’s Encrypt has had on encryption and SSL Certificates.

Jason SorokoThat’s right, Tim. In fact, really important, I would say. In fact, it’s amazing, when social media first was kind of a new thing, we had a period of time where everybody’s account was a fresh account, and people were contributing, and everything was good, and all of a sudden, people who were just too young would occasionally pass, and it would just be strange to have their absence in a world where their digital presence is still kind of there.

And I think in the world of cybersecurity which as a topic has been around a long time and as a profession, it’s been around for a while, but certainly, I think the types of, the presences of people that we’ve had in this field for a while, we really, really feel the losses of people. Especially those who’ve gone way too young, like Peter Eckersley.

TCTim CallanIt is interesting because it is such a young industry. Just computing in general, but also, the world of security, in particular that you are used to these luminaries walking around. I was just at RSA, and I saw Whit Diffie present and so you’re like that’s from Diffie, right? And so, that sort of thing is going on. These people are still among us, and so, when somebody does pass, I think it’s extra shocking. You’re used to maybe a great painter or a great musician, they’re not necessarily alive anymore, but when you think about a great computer technologist, you expect that that person is in an office somewhere right now. And so when these things do happen, it’s shocking.

Jason SorokoIt is shocking. And so maybe, Tim, all the more reason to call out people’s accomplishments. Especially, hopefully before they’ve passed but certainly, at periods of time like this, when the industry mourns a loss, a significant loss. Of course, Tim, a lot about the Let’s Encrypt technology that he was, that Peter was involved with, and the piece of it that I wanna call out is ACME as an SSL provisioning technology, and it’s not just the idea of ACME or, what sometimes, we all get wrapped around the acts of talking about the standards and, all the minutia. Peter was really into just making it easy and heavily involved with the Certbot project which I think really started to bring ACME as an SSL provisioning protocol to the masses. And that’s an enormous accomplishment, Tim.

TCTim CallanAnd it definitely did happen. I mean, ACME is very broadly supported and among vendors, among sites, there’s just, there’s just a great deal of use for ACME, and it really became for all practical purposes, a de facto standard in this regard.

Jason SorokoReally has become an important standard, and it’s because of the fact that I think behind it were some personalities that wanted it to be more than just some other acronym or technology that we all just sometimes have to deal with. This is something that required adoption and needed to be made easy. So if you look at the work that Peter Eckersley was doing throughout his life as a computer technologist and a visionary in that sense, I think that he really put his money where his mouth was in terms of also being able to put out software as a project that really was adoptable, usable and became important because of the fact that not only was it the right thing but it was something that could be used and could be used by a very wide swath of the people. In fact, I think a lot of people’s first usage of really easy provisioning technology for SSL was Certbot, and so a lot of people might not ever think about it, but yes, there was a human being involved behind making it that way, and that’s Peter Eckersley, so we gotta remember that.

TCTim CallanSo obviously, he’s got a legacy. ACME lives on and surely will continue to grow in importance. Certbot lives on, and so the work he did does not die with him, of course. But, unfortunately, too soon.

Jason SorokoTim, I don’t know if everybody had read this. I only found out from reading some not necessarily obituaries, but certainly some tributes to Peter Eckersley, but apparently, his roommate in college was Aaron Swartz, who many of you might remember from RSS, basically the news reader subscription type of service, and he minted that when he was very young. So obviously, Peter was hanging out with other visionaries as well. It’s amazing how concentrated the …

TCTim CallanThat was a high-powered dorm room right there.

Jason SorokoThat was a high-powered doom room. And of course, Aaron, himself ended it in a very, very unfortunate way as well, and I’ll let all of you read about that, but goodness, what a, what a story if you combine those two together in terms of the total output of what they were able to accomplish in their lives.

TCTim CallanSo, anyway. We just thought we should acknowledge that. A very important part of the certificate industry passing on and, our thoughts and respect go to the memory of Peter Eckersley.

Jason SorokoBig, huge nod to Peter and everybody who knew him and worked with him very closely. It’s just very short shoutout to be able to recognize those accomplishments. Thanks a lot, Tim.

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