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Comment by lawn | Hacker News Reader

As a side question is there a guide to setup https for a static website hosted at AWS buckets?

I looked at using Let's Encrypt for this, but it's much simpler to use AWS Certificate Manager's own certificate authority for this, because it's also free and it's built in so it will handle renewals for you. It's basically a checkbox in CloudFront; just put your files in S3 and set up a CloudFront distribution.

(If you're hosting an apex domain, e.g., example.com and not just www.example.com, it also makes things easier if you can use Route 53 as your DNS host, because CloudFront IPs keep changing and you can't make a CNAME for an apex.)

Yes, you will need to front the bucket with CloudFront and use the AWS Cert Manager to manage your own cert or to get one through AWS (free) and apply it to CloudFront.

Cloudflare is your friend. Either with a cloud front distribution or with a simple S3 bucket website. Guide: step 1, sign up for free at cloudflare. Step 2, follow instructions. As simple as it comes!

Doesn't that only encrypt half the trip?

The description is vague. Cloudflare offers customers a certificate from its private CA which can secure connections from Cloudflare to your systems without you needing a publicly trusted cert. This secures the other half of the circuit successfully if you take that route. Arguably in this limited role it's more secure since there's no third party.

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