Private Certificate Authority (ACM PCA)

Introduction

AWS Private Certificate Authority (ACM PCA) is a managed private Certificate Authority (CA) service that manages the lifecycle of your private certificates. ACM PCA extends ACM’s certificate management capabilities to private certificates, enabling you to manage public and private certificates centrally.

LocalStack allows you to use the ACM PCA APIs to create, list, and delete private certificates. You can creating, describing, tagging, and listing tags for a CA using ACM PCA. The supported APIs are available on our API Coverage section, which provides information on the extent of ACM PCA’s integration with LocalStack.

Getting started

This guide is designed for users who are new to ACM PCA and assumes basic knowledge of the AWS CLI and our awslocal wrapper script. We will follow the procedure to create and install a certificate for a single-level hierarchy CA hosted by ACM PCA.

Create a CA

Start by creating a new Certificate Authority with ACM PCA using the CreateCertificateAuthority API. This command sets up a new CA with specified configurations for key algorithm, signing algorithm, and subject information.

awslocal acm-pca create-certificate-authority \
     --certificate-authority-configuration '{
        "KeyAlgorithm":"RSA_2048",
        "SigningAlgorithm":"SHA256WITHRSA",
        "Subject":{
            "Country":"CH",
            "Organization":"LocalStack",
            "OrganizationalUnit":"Engineering",
            "CommonName":"test.localstack.cloud"
        }
     }' \
     --certificate-authority-type "ROOT"

{
    "CertificateAuthorityArn": "arn:aws:acm-pca:eu-central-1:000000000000:certificate-authority/0b20353f-ce7a-4de4-9b82-e06903a893ff"
}

Note the CertificateAuthorityArn from the output as it will be needed for subsequent commands.

To retrieve the detailed information about the created Certificate Authority, use the DescribeCertificateAuthority API. This command returns the detailed information about the CA, including the CA’s ARN, status, and configuration.

awslocal acm-pca describe-certificate-authority \
    --certificate-authority-arn arn:aws:acm-pca:eu-central-1:000000000000:certificate-authority/0b20353f-ce7a-4de4-9b82-e06903a893ff

{
    "CertificateAuthority": {
        "Arn": "arn:aws:acm-pca:eu-central-1:000000000000:certificate-authority/0b20353f-ce7a-4de4-9b82-e06903a893ff",
        "OwnerAccount": "000000000000",
        "CreatedAt": "2024-08-08T10:45:58.065504+05:30",
        "Type": "ROOT",
        "Status": "PENDING_CERTIFICATE",
        "CertificateAuthorityConfiguration": {
            "KeyAlgorithm": "RSA_2048",
            "SigningAlgorithm": "SHA256WITHRSA",
            "Subject": {
                "Country": "CH",
                "Organization": "LocalStack",
                "OrganizationalUnit": "Engineering",
                "CommonName": "test.localstack.cloud"
            }
        },
        "RevocationConfiguration": {
            "CrlConfiguration": {
                "Enabled": false
            }
        },
        "KeyStorageSecurityStandard": "FIPS_140_2_LEVEL_3_OR_HIGHER",
        "UsageMode": "SHORT_LIVED_CERTIFICATE"
    }
}

Note the PENDING_CERTIFICATE status. In the following steps, we will create and attach a certificate for this CA.

Issue CA Certificate

Use the GetCertificateAuthorityCsr operation to obtain the Certificate Signing Request (CSR) for the CA.

awslocal acm-pca get-certificate-authority-csr \
    --certificate-authority-arn arn:aws:acm-pca:eu-central-1:000000000000:certificate-authority/0b20353f-ce7a-4de4-9b82-e06903a893ff \
    --output text | tee ca.csr

Next, issue the certificate for the CA using this CSR.

awslocal acm-pca issue-certificate \
    --csr fileb://ca.csr \
    --signing-algorithm SHA256WITHRSA \
    --template-arn arn:aws:acm-pca:::template/RootCACertificate/V1 \
    --validity Value=10,Type=YEARS \
    --certificate-authority-arn arn:aws:acm-pca:eu-central-1:000000000000:certificate-authority/0b20353f-ce7a-4de4-9b82-e06903a893ff

{
    "CertificateArn": "arn:aws:acm-pca:eu-central-1:000000000000:certificate-authority/0b20353f-ce7a-4de4-9b82-e06903a893ff/certificate/17ef7bbf3cc6471ba3ef0707119b8392"
}

The CA certificate is now created and its ARN is indicated by the CertificateArn parameter.

Import CA Certificate

Finally, we retrieve the signed certificate with GetCertificate and import it using ImportCertificateAuthorityCertificate.

awslocal acm-pca get-certificate \
    --certificate-authority-arn arn:aws:acm-pca:eu-central-1:000000000000:certificate-authority/0b20353f-ce7a-4de4-9b82-e06903a893ff \
    --certificate-arn arn:aws:acm-pca:eu-central-1:000000000000:certificate-authority/0b20353f-ce7a-4de4-9b82-e06903a893ff/certificate/17ef7bbf3cc6471ba3ef0707119b8392 \
    --output text | tee cert.pem

awslocal acm-pca import-certificate-authority-certificate \
     --certificate-authority-arn arn:aws:acm-pca:eu-central-1:000000000000:certificate-authority/0b20353f-ce7a-4de4-9b82-e06903a893ff \
     --certificate fileb://cert.pem

The CA is now ready for use. You can verify this by checking its status:

awslocal acm-pca describe-certificate-authority \
    --certificate-authority-arn arn:aws:acm-pca:eu-central-1:000000000000:certificate-authority/0b20353f-ce7a-4de4-9b82-e06903a893ff \
    --query CertificateAuthority.Status \
    --output text

ACTIVE

The CA certificate can be retrieved at a later point using GetCertificateAuthorityCertificate. In general, this operation returns both the certificate and the certificate chain. In this case however, only the certificate will be returned, because we used a single-level CA hierarchy and the certificate chain is null. For production setups, you must use a multi-level CA hierarchy for best security.

Issue End-entity Certificates

With the private CA set up, you can now issue end-entity certificates.

Using OpenSSL, create a CSR and the private key:

openssl req -out local-csr.pem -new -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout local-pkey.pem

You may inspect the CSR using the following command. It should resemble the illustrated output.

openssl req -in local-csr.pem -text -noout

Certificate Request:
    Data:
        Version: 1 (0x0)
        Subject: C = IN, ST = GA, O = EvilCorp, OU = Engineering, CN = evilcorp.com
        Subject Public Key Info:
            Public Key Algorithm: rsaEncryption
                Public-Key: (2048 bit)
                Modulus:
                    00:a3:1d:5d:50:00:5c:4e:5d:79:a8:9a:d4:10:f4:
                    ...
                Exponent: 65537 (0x10001)
        Attributes:
            (none)
            Requested Extensions:
    Signature Algorithm: sha256WithRSAEncryption
    Signature Value:
        3e:23:12:26:45:af:39:35:5d:d7:b4:40:fb:1a:08:c7:16:c3:
        ...

Next, using IssueCertificate you can generate the end-entity certificate. Note that there is no certificate template specified which causes the end-entity certificate to be issued by default.

awslocal acm-pca issue-certificate \
      --certificate-authority-arn arn:aws:acm-pca:eu-central-1:000000000000:certificate-authority/0b20353f-ce7a-4de4-9b82-e06903a893ff \
      --csr fileb://local-csr.pem \
      --signing-algorithm "SHA256WITHRSA" \
      --validity Value=365,Type="DAYS"

The output will be similar to the following:

{
    "CertificateArn": "arn:aws:acm-pca:eu-central-1:000000000000:certificate-authority/0b20353f-ce7a-4de4-9b82-e06903a893ff/certificate/079d0a13daf943f6802d365dd83658c7"
}

Verify Certificates

Using OpenSSL, you can verify that the end-entity certificate was indeed signed by the CA. In the following command, local-cert.pem refers to the end-entity certificate and cert.pem refers to the CA certificate.

openssl verify -CAfile cert.pem local-cert.pem

local-cert.pem: OK

Tag the Certificate Authority

Tagging resources in AWS helps in managing and identifying them. Use the TagCertificateAuthority API to tag the created Certificate Authority. This command adds the specified tags to the specified CA.

awslocal acm-pca tag-certificate-authority \
    --certificate-authority-arn arn:aws:acm-pca:us-east-1:000000000000:certificate-authority/f38ee966-bc23-40f8-8143-e981aee73600 \
    --tags Key=Admin,Value=Alice

After tagging your Certificate Authority, you may want to view these tags. You can use the ListTags API to list all the tags associated with the specified CA.

awslocal acm-pca list-tags \
    --certificate-authority-arn arn:aws:acm-pca:us-east-1:000000000000:certificate-authority/f38ee966-bc23-40f8-8143-e981aee73600 \
    --max-results 10

{
    "Tags": [
        {
            "Key": "Name",
            "Value": "MyPCA"
        },
        {
            "Key": "Admin",
            "Value": "Alice"
        }
    ]
}

API Coverage

Operation ▲	Implemented	Image	Kubernetes Support

Page 1 of 0