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CERTIFICATE_SIGNING.md

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Certificate Signing - Overview

Certificate authority (CA) signing in Conjur adds support for signing host certificates using a CA certificate and private key stored in Conjur.

A primary use case this supports is configuring mutual TLS between hosts with application identity provisioned in Conjur. In this scenario, Conjur operators can configure a signing CA in conjur with a key and issuer certificate created outside of Conjur. Hosts may be granted the privilege to sign their own short-lived certificate through the CA. This host certificate can then be used to identify the service to other hosts or systems that trust the issuing CA.

Getting Started

To begin signing host certificates you need:

  • A running Conjur instance
  • A policy to configure the CA and hosts to request certificates
  • A certificate chain and private key for the issuer CA

Policy for Conjur CAs

The policy for configuring a Conjur Certificate authority begins with a webservice entity with a well-known id of the form conjur/<ca-service-id>/ca. The CA is configured using well-known annotations. A minimal CA policy might look like:

- !variable my-issuer/private-key
- !variable my-issuer/private-key-password
- !variable my-issuer/certificate-chain

- !webservice
    id: conjur/my-issuer/ca
    annotations:
      ca/private-key: my-issuer/private-key
      ca/private-key-password: my-issuer/private-key-password
      ca/certificate-chain: my-issuer/certificate-chain
      ca/max_ttl: P1M
  • ca/private-key (required): Name of conjur variable that contains the PEM encoded CA private key.
  • ca/private-key-password (optional): Name of conjur variable that the password for the private key.

    This is only necessary if the key is encrypted when loaded into Conjur.

  • ca/certificate-chain (required): Name of conjur variable that contains the PEM encoded certificate chain for the issuer.
  • ca/max_ttl (required): Value of max allowed TTL in ISO8601 format.

A complete CA policy would also include a group or layer for permitting hosts to submit certificate signing requests (CSRs). An example would be:

- !policy 
  id: conjur/<service-id>/ca
  body:
    # Signed certificates will be valid for up to a year
    - !webservice
        annotations:
          ca/private-key: ops/ca/private-key
          ca/private-key-password: ops/ca/private-key-password # If the import PEM key is encrypted
          ca/certificate-chain: ops/ca/private-key-chain
          ca/max_ttl: P1M

    - !group clients

    # Allow hosts in the `clients` group to be signed
    - !permit
      role: !group clients
      privilege: [ sign ]
      resource: !webservice

Generate an Intermediate CA Private Key and Certificate Chain

Conjur CAs require the issuing private key and certificate to be generated outside of Conjur. A good walk through of creating a root CA and then an intermediate CA that may be used in conjur is available here.

Signing Host Certificates

Once the CA is configured in Conjur and a host has sign privileges, then a host may submit a CSR to the CA endpoint for signing:

  • The host first needs to generate its own private key and a certificate signing request (CSR).

  • The host must be authenticated to conjur, and then POST the PEM encoded CSR to /ca/<account>/<ca_id>/sign

  • If the CSR is valid and the host is authorized, then the CA will respond with the PEM encoded certificate.

  • The CA will assign the follow subject data on the issued certificate:

    • The common name (CN) will have the form {account}:{ca_service_id}:host:{host_id}.
    • A DNS subject alternative name will be added with the leaf portion of the host. e.g. a host with id production/cart/srv-01 will include a DNS subject alternative name of srv-01.
    • A SPIFFE SVID URI subject alternative name will be added of the form spiffe://conjur/{account}/{ca_service_id}/host/{host_id}

A full example of certificate signing is available here