I rewrote my 2012 self-signed cert generator in Go
cert-depot.com
Details
- External ID
- 47613622
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- —
- Website domain
- —
- Launched
- April 2, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 9
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.5501285347043702
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Description
Back in 2012 I built https://cert-depot.com as a weekend project. Node.js + Express + jQuery, shelling out to OpenSSL for certificate generation. It worked but I eventually let it rot. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4766743Rewrote it from scratch in Go. The entire thing is a single binary with no external dependencies:1. Certificate generation uses Go's crypto/x509 (no OpenSSL)2. Certificates are generated in memory and streamed directly — nothing is stored on the server3. RSA 2048/4096 and ECDSA P-256/P-3844. Subject Alternative Names (required by browsers since Chrome 58)5. ZIP (PEM files) or PFX/PKCS#12 outputYou comments / suggestions / bug reports are very welcome. Thanks.Source: https://github.com/dimastopel/certdepot
Enrichment
- Theme
- self-hosted infrastructure and security tools
- Vertical
- Security
- Function
- Dev tools
- Audience
- Developer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- self-signed certificate generator
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Yes It is a simple Go HTTP server using the standard library's crypto/x509 and crypto/tls packages to generate self-signed SSL/TLS certificates.
Discussion
1 comment analyzed.
Concerns raised: CA cert distribution across heterogeneous environments (Linux, Windows, Java) becomes maintenance burden, Self-signed cert deployment complexity across multiple trust stores
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 78 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #34 of 79 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 133 days after the earliest competitor.
- SelfCertForge, manage root CAs and self-signed certs on macOS/Windows · hn · 2026-05-13 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.54
- CertKit for automating SSL certs to Windows, JKS, and appliances · hn · 2026-04-08 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- BitTorrent client written in Go without external dependencies · hn · 2026-02-28 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- PassTheCert-rs · github · 2026-09-09 · 37 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- Browser-based Nginx config generator with live preview · hn · 2026-09-09 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- I built a DNS resolver from scratch in Rust · hn · 2026-04-02 · 115 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- CertFlow · ph · 2026-09-07 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- X509-certificate-exporter · hn · 2026-05-12 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.41
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a dev tools tool for Sales yet.