Horible public key tricks:

A developer has embedded a readable ASCII message inside the public key of the TLS certificate for maurycyz.com, turning an ordinary Let's Encrypt certificate into a visible protest against the current SSL/TLS system. The author argues that the ACME protocol forces site operators through a complex, recurring dance of DNS or web-server validation, that certificates expire every few months, and that the trust chain is undermined by authorities issuing certificates over plaintext connections and using weak keys such as "4." Rather than abandon encryption entirely, the author proposes a "protest certificate" that keeps traffic encrypted against passive eavesdropping while making the absurdity of the certificate system obvious to anyone who inspects it. The move matters because it highlights how little of the certificate ecosystem is actually verified, and it remains to be seen whether other site operators adopt vanity keys and whether certificate authorities tighten their key-generation checks.