shankar0123
e7a94b6080
Closes the last Phase before the Bundle 1 Exit gate. Operators
now have authoritative reference + threat model + migration guide
covering every behavior change Bundles 0-12 introduced.
# New docs
* docs/operator/rbac.md (340 lines) — operator how-to:
- Mental model (actors / roles / permissions / scopes)
- 7 default roles seeded by migration 000029 + the 5
admin-only fine-grained perms seeded by 000030
- Permission catalogue table by namespace
- Scope semantics (global beats specific) + the Bundle-2
deferral on scope_id FK enforcement
- Granting / revoking access from GUI + CLI + HTTP API + MCP
- The auditor pattern (audit-only, no resource read)
- Day-0 bootstrap flow (CERTCTL_BOOTSTRAP_TOKEN → curl →
HTTP 410 thereafter)
- Demo-mode (CERTCTL_AUTH_TYPE=none) caveat for production
* docs/operator/auth-threat-model.md (180 lines) — what the
controls defend against:
- 5 threat actors (external, wrong-role, compromised key,
insider operator, compromised auditor)
- Per-defense walk-through (API-key auth, RBAC, bootstrap,
approval workflow + Phase 9 closure, audit trail,
protocol-endpoint allowlist)
- 9 explicit deferrals (OIDC, sessions, local accounts,
JIT elevation, MFA, etc.) — Bundle 2 / future scope
- Compliance mapping (SOC 2 CC6.1/CC6.3, HIPAA §164.312(b),
NIST SSDF PO.5.2, FedRAMP AU-9, PCI-DSS §10)
- 5 operator-runnable sanity checks (e.g.,
'SELECT FROM audit_events WHERE actor=system-bypass' MUST
return 0 in production)
* docs/migration/api-keys-to-rbac.md (200 lines) — v2.0.x →
v2.1.0 upgrade flow:
- The SECURITY: AUDIT YOUR API KEYS callout
- Migration list (000029-000033) + what each does
- 4-mode scope-down flow (interactive / non-interactive
JSON / --suggest / --suggest --apply)
- What changes for code that called auth.IsAdmin
- Helm-specific upgrade flow with example post-upgrade Job
- Docker Compose upgrade flow + the 5 examples folders
that ride demo mode unchanged
- Verification queries + rollback flow
# Updated docs
* docs/operator/security.md — Last-reviewed bumped to
2026-05-09; existing Authentication-surface section
extended to call out the Bundle 1 RBAC primitive,
day-0 bootstrap path, and approval-bypass closure with
cross-references to the new docs.
* docs/reference/profiles.md — Last-reviewed header
formatting fixed (added the > blockquote prefix used
consistently across the docs tree).
# docs/README.md navigation
* Operator section gains 2 new rows (RBAC + auth-threat-model)
and Approval-workflow row updated to mention Phase 9
closure.
* Reference section gains the Profiles row.
* Migration section gains the api-keys-to-rbac row with the
AUDIT YOUR API KEYS callout in the link description.
# CHANGELOG.md v2.1.0 section refreshed
The Phase 7 commit landed the SECURITY: AUDIT YOUR API KEYS
callout. This commit appends the missing Phase 9-12 highlights:
- Approval-bypass closure (profile-edit gate + flip-flop
loophole + ErrApproveBySameActor invariant)
- GUI: Roles / API Keys / Auth Settings / Approvals queue
- 12 new MCP RBAC tools
- Coverage gates on internal/auth + internal/service/auth
- Protocol-endpoint allowlist pinned at 3 layers
Trailing cross-reference block now points at all 4 new docs.
# Verifications
* Every internal link in the 4 new/modified docs validated by
shell sweep (find broken links → 0 hits).
* Every new doc carries 'Last reviewed: 2026-05-09' header
with the > blockquote prefix matching the docs-tree
convention.
* go vet ./... clean.
* staticcheck across every Bundle-1-touched Go package clean.
* gofmt -l clean repo-wide.
* go test -short -count=1 green across internal/auth (incl.
bootstrap), internal/api/handler, internal/api/router,
internal/cli, internal/service (incl. auth),
internal/domain/auth, internal/mcp, cmd/cli (cmd/server
has 1 environmental failure on the sandbox virtiofs-tmp:
TestPreflightSCEPRACertKey_KeyWorldReadable_Refuses depends
on tmpfs file-mode semantics that virtiofs propagates
differently — pre-existing, unrelated to Bundle 1).
* Frontend: 19 Vitest tests across src/pages/auth/ +
AuditPage all pass; tsc --noEmit clean.
certctl — Self-Hosted Certificate Lifecycle Platform
certctl is a self-hosted platform that automates the entire TLS certificate lifecycle, from issuance through renewal to deployment, with zero human intervention. It works with any certificate authority, deploys to any server, and keeps private keys on your infrastructure where they belong. Free, source-available under BSL 1.1, covers the same lifecycle that enterprise platforms charge $100K+/year for.
The CA/Browser Forum's Ballot SC-081v3 caps public TLS certificates at 200 days by March 2026, 100 days by 2027, and 47 days by 2029. At 47-day lifespans, a team managing 100 certificates is processing 7+ renewals per week, every week, forever. Manual workflows stop being a choice.
Status: Early-access. Production-quality core (Local CA, ACME, agent deployment, CRUD, audit) with broader feature surface (intermediate CA hierarchy, ACME/SCEP/EST servers, network appliances) still maturing. Lab and dev deployments encouraged; production deployments welcome with the understanding that customer-scale battle-testing is in progress. File GitHub issues for any rough edges.
Actively maintained, shipping weekly. Open an issue if something breaks. CI runs the full test suite with race detection, static analysis, and vulnerability scanning on every commit.
Ready to try it? Jump to the Quick Start. For the marketing site, see certctl.io.
Documentation
The full audience-organized index lives at docs/README.md. Top-level entry points:
| Audience | Start here |
|---|---|
| New to certctl | Concepts → Quickstart → Examples |
| Production operator | Architecture → Security posture → Disaster recovery runbook |
| PKI engineer | ACME server → SCEP server → EST server → CA hierarchy |
| Migrating from another tool | from certbot / from acme.sh / cert-manager coexistence |
| Contributor | Architecture → Testing strategy → CI pipeline |
For the connector reference (12 issuers, 15 targets, 6 notifiers) see docs/reference/connectors/index.md.
Screenshots
 Dashboard Stats, expiration heatmap, renewal trends, issuance rate |
 Certificates Inventory with bulk ops, status filters, owner/team columns |
 Issuers Catalog with 10 CA types, GUI config, test connection |
 Jobs Issuance, renewal, deployment queue with approval workflow |
Why certctl
Certificate lifecycle tooling has historically split into two camps. Enterprise platforms charge six-figure annual licenses, take months to deploy, and bill professional-services hours at $250 to $400 per hour to write integration code that should ship with the product. Single-purpose tools handle one slice of the problem and leave the operator to glue the rest together. certctl fills the gap — full lifecycle automation, self-hosted, free, CA-agnostic, target-agnostic. If you're stitching together cron jobs across a fleet, manually renewing certs, or writing custom integration scripts to bridge a commercial CLM platform to your actual infrastructure, certctl replaces all of that.
Built for platform engineering and DevOps teams managing 10 to 500+ certificates, security teams who need audit trails and policy enforcement, and small teams without enterprise budgets who need enterprise-grade automation for a 50-server environment. For the detailed positioning argument and when not to use certctl, see Why certctl?.
What it does
certctl handles the full certificate lifecycle in one self-hosted control plane:
- Issue and renew from any CA. Let's Encrypt and any ACME provider, an embedded ACME server you can point cert-manager / certbot / lego at directly, a built-in local CA with sub-CA mode (chains under your enterprise root like ADCS), step-ca, Vault PKI, EJBCA, AWS ACM PCA, Google CAS, DigiCert, Sectigo, GlobalSign, Entrust, plus an OpenSSL / shell-script adapter for anything custom. Twelve native issuer connectors. See the connector reference.
- Deploy automatically to NGINX, Apache, HAProxy, Caddy, Traefik, Envoy, IIS, Windows Cert Store, Java keystore, Kubernetes Secrets, AWS ACM, Azure Key Vault, SSH known-hosts, Postfix + Dovecot, F5 BIG-IP. Fifteen native target connectors. Every deploy goes through atomic-write + ownership-preservation + SHA-256 idempotency + per-target Prometheus counters + pre-deploy snapshot + on-failure rollback. See
docs/reference/deployment-model.md. - Run as an ACME server so existing client tooling plugs in directly. RFC 8555 + RFC 9773 ARI, two per-profile auth modes (public-trust-style validation or trust_authenticated for internal PKI), doubly-signed key rollover, revoke-cert on both kid path and jwk path, per-account rate limiting. Cert-manager / certbot / lego all work pointed at it. See
docs/reference/protocols/acme-server.md. - Run as a SCEP server for Microsoft Intune-managed phones, ChromeOS devices, network appliances. RFC 8894 native with full PKIMessage wire format, native Intune challenge dispatch with replay protection, per-profile dispatch with separate RA cert per profile. See
docs/reference/protocols/scep-server.md. - Run as an EST server for HTTPS-based PKCS#10 enrollment. 802.1X / Wi-Fi authentication, IoT device enrollment, RFC 9266 channel binding. See
docs/reference/protocols/est.md. - Manage multi-level CA hierarchies with name constraints, path-length enforcement, and end-to-end RFC 5280 path validation. Root → intermediate → issuing chains, admin-gated CRUD, drain-first retirement. Patterns documented for 4-level boundary CAs, 3-level policy CAs with per-BU
PermittedDNSDomains, and 2-level internal PKI. Seedocs/reference/intermediate-ca-hierarchy.md. - Gate high-stakes issuance behind two-person-integrity approval. Flag a profile as
RequiresApproval, the request lands in a queue, a non-requester approves, the scheduler dispatches. Seedocs/operator/approval-workflow.md. - Discover existing certs across your fleet via filesystem scanning on agents, network TLS probing across CIDR ranges, and cloud secret manager imports (AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, GCP Secret Manager). Triage workflow for claim / dismiss / investigate.
- Revoke with full RFC 5280 reason codes, DER CRL generation per issuer (scheduler-pre-generated and ETag-cached), and an embedded RFC 6960 OCSP responder with dedicated per-issuer responder certs. Single + bulk revocation. See
docs/reference/protocols/crl-ocsp.md. - Alert via Slack, Microsoft Teams, PagerDuty, OpsGenie, email, webhooks. Per-policy multi-channel routing matrix with severity tiers and fault-isolating per-channel dispatch. See
docs/operator/runbooks/expiry-alerts.md. - Drive the platform from natural language via the bundled MCP (Model Context Protocol) server. The full REST API is exposed as MCP tools — ask your AI client "show me all expiring certificates", "revoke the VPN cert, key compromised", or "what agents are offline?" and it translates to API calls. Stateless stdio-transport binary at
cmd/mcp-server/; same auth as the REST API; no extra attack surface. Seedocs/reference/mcp.md.
Architecture and security
Go 1.25 control plane with handler → service → repository layering. PostgreSQL 16 backend (35+ tables, idempotent migrations). Pull-only deployment model — the server never initiates outbound connections. Agents poll for work and generate ECDSA P-256 keys locally so private keys never touch the control plane. For network appliances and agentless servers, a proxy agent in the same network zone handles deployment via the target's API (WinRM, iControl REST, SSH/SFTP). See the Architecture Guide for full system diagrams.
Security: API key auth enforced by default with SHA-256 hashing and constant-time comparison. CORS deny-by-default. Shell injection prevention on all connector scripts. SSRF protection (reserved IP filtering) on the network scanner. Issuer and target credentials encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM. HTTPS-only control plane with TLS 1.3 pinned and a fail-closed startup gate that refuses to boot if the TLS bundle is unusable. Every API call recorded to an immutable audit trail with actor attribution, body hash, and latency tracking. CI runs race detection, 11 linters, and vulnerability scanning on every commit. See docs/operator/security.md for the operator-facing security posture.
Quick Start
Docker Compose (recommended)
git clone https://github.com/certctl-io/certctl.git
cd certctl
docker compose -f deploy/docker-compose.yml -f deploy/docker-compose.demo.yml up -d --build
Wait ~30 seconds, then open https://localhost:8443 in your browser. The shipped demo overlay seeds 32 certificates across 10 issuers, 8 agents, and 180 days of realistic history. The certctl-tls-init init container self-signs an ECDSA-P256 cert on first boot — accept the browser warning for the demo, or feed the generated ca.crt to your client.
For a clean install without demo data, drop the -f deploy/docker-compose.demo.yml flag and run docker compose -f deploy/docker-compose.yml up -d --build. The four compose files (docker-compose.yml base, docker-compose.demo.yml overlay, docker-compose.dev.yml for PgAdmin + debug logging, docker-compose.test.yml for integration tests) are documented at deploy/ENVIRONMENTS.md.
curl --cacert $(docker compose -f deploy/docker-compose.yml exec -T certctl-server cat /etc/certctl/tls/ca.crt) https://localhost:8443/health
# {"status":"healthy"}
The control plane is HTTPS-only with TLS 1.3 pinned. See docs/operator/tls.md for cert provisioning patterns.
Agent install (one-liner)
curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/certctl-io/certctl/master/install-agent.sh | bash
Detects your OS and architecture, downloads the binary, configures systemd (Linux) or launchd (macOS), and starts the agent. See install-agent.sh.
Helm chart (Kubernetes)
helm install certctl deploy/helm/certctl/ \
--set server.apiKey=your-api-key \
--set postgres.password=your-db-password
Production-ready chart with Server Deployment, PostgreSQL StatefulSet, Agent DaemonSet, health probes, security contexts (non-root, read-only rootfs), and optional Ingress. See values.yaml.
Container images
docker pull ghcr.io/certctl-io/certctl-server:latest
docker pull ghcr.io/certctl-io/certctl-agent:latest
Examples
Pick the scenario closest to your setup and have it running in 2 minutes:
| Example | Scenario |
|---|---|
examples/acme-nginx/ |
Let's Encrypt + NGINX, HTTP-01 challenges |
examples/acme-wildcard-dns01/ |
Wildcard certs via DNS-01 (Cloudflare hook included) |
examples/private-ca-traefik/ |
Local CA (self-signed or sub-CA) + Traefik file provider |
examples/step-ca-haproxy/ |
Smallstep step-ca + HAProxy combined PEM |
examples/multi-issuer/ |
ACME for public + Local CA for internal, one dashboard |
Each directory contains a docker-compose.yml and a README.md explaining the scenario, prerequisites, and customization.
Verifying a release
Every v* tag publishes signed, attested artefacts (Cosign keyless OIDC + SLSA Level 3 provenance + SPDX-JSON SBOMs). For the verification procedure, see docs/reference/release-verification.md.
Development
make build # Build server + agent binaries
make test # Run tests
make lint # golangci-lint (11 linters)
govulncheck ./... # Vulnerability scan
make docker-up # Start Docker Compose stack
CI runs go vet, go test -race, golangci-lint, govulncheck, and per-layer coverage thresholds (service 55%, handler 60%, domain 40%, middleware 30%) on every push. Frontend CI runs TypeScript type checking, Vitest tests, and Vite production build.
For the full contributor guide see docs/contributor/ — testing strategy, test environment, CI pipeline, QA prerequisites.
License
Licensed under the Business Source License 1.1. The source code is publicly available and free to use, modify, and self-host. The one restriction: you may not use certctl's certificate management functionality as part of a commercial certificate-management offering to third parties. See the LICENSE file for the full Additional Use Grant.
For licensing inquiries: certctl@proton.me
Dependencies
go list -m all | wc -l # total module count (direct + transitive)
go mod why <path> # explain why a module is pulled in
govulncheck ./... # vulnerability scan (CI runs this on every commit)
The release-time SBOM is published as an SPDX-JSON file alongside each release artifact.
If certctl solves a problem you have, star the repo to help others find it. Questions, bugs, or feature requests: open an issue.