certctl/docs/reference/connectors/aws-acm.md

AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) Target Connector — Operator Deep-Dive

Last reviewed: 2026-05-05

Operator-grade documentation for the AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) target connector. For the connector-development context (interface contract, registry, atomic deploy primitive shared across all targets), see the connector index.

Note: this is the target connector that deploys certificates into ACM for ALB / CloudFront / API Gateway / App Runner consumption. The issuer connector that pulls certs from AWS ACM Private CA is documented separately at aws-acm-pca.md.

Overview

The AWS ACM target connector deploys certificates into AWS Certificate Manager — the public AWS service that ALB / CloudFront / API Gateway / App Runner consume by ARN. Closes the "we terminate TLS at AWS, how do we get certctl-issued certs to ALB?" question for cloud-first deployments. Rank 5 of the 2026-05-03 Infisical deep-research deliverable.

Implementation lives at internal/connector/target/awsacm/.

When to use this connector

Use the AWS ACM target connector when:

• TLS terminates at AWS-managed edges (ALB, CloudFront, API Gateway, App Runner) and those services consume certs by ACM ARN.
• You want certctl to drive the rotation while Terraform / CloudFormation handles the ARN-to-resource attachment.
• You need short-lived IAM credentials (IRSA, instance profiles) rather than long-lived access keys.

Look elsewhere when:

• The target is an EC2 instance running NGINX / HAProxy / Apache directly — those connectors are simpler than the ACM round-trip.
• You're using ACM Private CA for internal trust — that's the aws-acm-pca.md issuer, a different connector.

Configuration

{
  "region": "us-east-1",
  "certificate_arn": "arn:aws:acm:us-east-1:123456789012:certificate/abcdef01-2345-6789-abcd-ef0123456789",
  "tags": {"env": "production", "app": "api-gateway"}
}

Field	Default	Description
region	(required)	AWS region for the ACM endpoint (e.g. us-east-1). CloudFront-attached certs MUST live in us-east-1; ALB / API Gateway use the same region as the load balancer.
certificate_arn	—	ARN of an existing ACM certificate to rotate in place. Empty on first deploy — the adapter creates a new ACM cert via ImportCertificate and the deployment record's Metadata captures the resulting ARN. Operators can also pre-create the ARN out-of-band (Terraform, CloudFormation) and pin it here.
tags	—	Tags applied to the ACM cert at first import + re-applied via AddTagsToCertificate on every subsequent import (ACM strips tags on re-import). The reserved keys certctl-managed-by and certctl-certificate-id are set automatically and cannot be overridden.

IAM policy (minimum permissions)

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [{
    "Effect": "Allow",
    "Action": [
      "acm:ImportCertificate",
      "acm:GetCertificate",
      "acm:DescribeCertificate",
      "acm:ListCertificates",
      "acm:AddTagsToCertificate"
    ],
    "Resource": "arn:aws:acm:*:*:certificate/*"
  }]
}

Auth recipes

• IRSA (IAM Roles for Service Accounts) — recommended for K8s deploys. Annotate the agent's ServiceAccount with eks.amazonaws.com/role-arn=arn:aws:iam::<account>:role/certctl-acm-deployer. The role's trust policy allows the cluster's OIDC provider; permission policy is the JSON above. Short-lived STS credentials are auto-rotated by EKS — no long-lived access keys.
• EC2 instance profile — recommended for VM-based agents. Attach an instance profile referencing the same role. SDK's LoadDefaultConfig picks credentials up via the IMDS metadata service.
• AWS SSO / aws configure sso — recommended for operator workstations. SDK reads ~/.aws/config for the SSO profile and refreshes tokens via the existing CLI session.
• Long-lived access keys are NOT supported in connector Config — the credential chain is configured at the SDK level, not the connector level. This is a procurement- readability decision: a security reviewer reading the deployment_targets table should never find an access key.

Atomic-rollback contract

Every DeployCertificate snapshots the existing cert via DescribeCertificate + GetCertificate BEFORE calling ImportCertificate with the new bytes. After import, the connector re-fetches the cert metadata and compares serial numbers.

On serial-mismatch (post-verify failure), the connector calls ImportCertificate again with the snapshotted bytes to restore the previous cert. The rollback path emits a WARN-level slog entry; the rollback's own success or failure is exposed via certctl_deploy_rollback_total{target_type="AWSACM",outcome="restored"|"also_failed"} per the deploy-hardening I Phase 10 metric exposer.

Mirrors the Bundle 5+ pre-deploy-snapshot pattern shipped for IIS / WinCertStore / JavaKeystore.

ALB attachment recipe

certctl creates / rotates the ACM cert; the operator (or Terraform / CloudFormation) attaches it to the ALB listener separately. For Terraform-driven deployments, look up the ARN by tag:

data "aws_acm_certificate" "certctl_managed" {
  domain      = "api.example.com"
  most_recent = true

  # Filter by certctl provenance tags so an unrelated ACM cert with
  # the same SAN doesn't get picked up.
  tags = {
    "certctl-managed-by"      = "certctl"
    "certctl-certificate-id"  = "mc-api-prod"
  }
}

resource "aws_lb_listener" "https" {
  load_balancer_arn = aws_lb.api.arn
  port              = 443
  protocol          = "HTTPS"
  certificate_arn   = data.aws_acm_certificate.certctl_managed.arn
  # ...
}

The ARN updates in place across renewals (ACM ImportCertificate is upsert-style when given an ARN), so the ALB listener's certificate_arn reference doesn't change. CloudFront / API Gateway distributions can reference the same ARN via their respective Terraform resources.

Threat model carve-outs

• Cert key bytes never written to disk on the agent. DeployCertificate reads request.KeyPEM from memory and passes it to the SDK's ImportCertificate call. No temp file. No swap-out window.
• Provenance tags are mandatory. The reserved certctl-managed-by=certctl + certctl-certificate-id=<mc-id> pair is set automatically on every import. Operators identifying a stray ACM cert in their account can match against certctl-managed-by to confirm it was certctl-issued (or NOT — the absence of the tag means a manual import).
• No long-lived AWS credentials in Config. Config carries region + ARN + operator tags only. AWS auth is the SDK credential chain (IRSA / instance profile / SSO).
• ListCertificates IAM permission is required for the V2 ARN-discovery dance to work. Operators who pin Config.CertificateArn after the first deploy can drop this permission; the V2 fallback emits a warning and reverts to "always create new ARN" if the operator forgets to update certificate_arn post-first-deploy.

Procurement checklist crib

Paste into security review:

• certctl uses short-lived IAM-role credentials via IRSA / instance profile, not long-lived access keys.
• The cert key is held only in agent memory during the import call; never written to disk.
• Every imported ACM cert is tagged with certctl-managed-by=certctl + certctl-certificate-id=<mc-id> for forensic traceability.
• Failed imports trigger automatic rollback to the snapshotted previous cert; both outcomes are surfaced via Prometheus.
• The minimum IAM policy is 5 actions on arn:aws:acm:*:*:certificate/*; CloudTrail captures every API call for compliance audits.

ValidateOnly contract

ACM has no dry-run API for ImportCertificate; ValidateOnly returns target.ErrValidateOnlyNotSupported per the deploy- hardening I Phase 3 sentinel contract. Operators preview deploys via ValidateConfig + aws acm describe-certificate --certificate-arn <arn> against the current ARN.

Related docs

• Connector index — interface contract, registry, deploy primitive
• Azure Key Vault — Azure equivalent target
• AWS ACM Private CA issuer — the issuer counterpart (same vendor, opposite direction)
• Cloud targets runbook — operator playbook covering both AWS ACM and Azure KV