mirror of
https://github.com/shankar0123/certctl.git
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shankar0123
977cdbdf44
Pre-fix the README said nothing about role-based access control,
the auditor role, the day-0 bootstrap path, or the four-eyes
approval workflow — all shipped in Bundle 1 (commit 22c4971 +
follow-ons). A prospective adopter landing on the README would
read "API key auth enforced by default" and walk away thinking
certctl had no authz primitive at all. The only OIDC reference
was the cosign-keyless line at the artefact-signing section,
unrelated to authentication.
Three surgical edits:
1. Status block: extend the "production-quality core" enumeration
with role-based authz, auditor split, day-0 bootstrap, four-eyes
approval. Add a one-line callout that federated identity (OIDC,
SAML, WebAuthn, server-side sessions, break-glass, JIT
elevation) is roadmap-not-shipped — preempts the natural-but-
wrong assumption that "RBAC means OIDC works".
The two terms are linked inline:
- "role-based authz" -> docs/operator/rbac.md (operator how-to:
role table, permission catalogue, scope semantics, GUI/CLI/
HTTP/MCP grant flows, day-0 bootstrap).
- "Federated identity" -> docs/operator/auth-threat-model.md
#threats-bundle-1-does-not-close (canonical place where
deferred Bundle-2 work is enumerated).
Keeps the roadmap promise honest: a skeptic can click through
to the explicit deferred-work list rather than taking prose at
face value.
2. "What it does" feature list: insert a new bullet right after the
approval-workflow bullet covering the 7 default roles, the 33-
permission canonical catalogue, scope semantics, the auditor
read-only invariant, the bootstrap path, and the
privilege-escalation guard. Cross-links to docs/operator/rbac.md,
the threat model, and the v2.0.x → v2.1.0 migration guide.
3. Security paragraph: replace "API key auth enforced by default
with SHA-256 hashing and constant-time comparison" with the
Bundle-1 reality — auth + RBAC + auditor + bootstrap + privilege-
escalation guard — keeping the rest of the paragraph (CORS,
SSRF, encryption-at-rest, TLS-1.3, audit trail, CI gates)
unchanged.
Verified:
Both link targets exist on disk
(docs/operator/rbac.md, docs/operator/auth-threat-model.md).
Threat-model anchor heading "## Threats Bundle 1 does NOT close"
is intact (line 138).
All 24 ci-guards pass locally including S-1 (no hardcoded source
counts re-introduced) and G-3 (no env-var docs drift).
Updates the README to match Bundle 1's actually-shipped surface
and to set honest expectations about Bundle 2 (federated identity)
being the next slice, not yet landed.
177 lines
17 KiB
Markdown
177 lines
17 KiB
Markdown
<p align="center">
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<img src="docs/screenshots/logo/certctl-logo.png" alt="certctl logo" width="450">
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</p>
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# certctl — Self-Hosted Certificate Lifecycle Platform
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[](LICENSE)
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[](https://goreportcard.com/report/github.com/certctl-io/certctl)
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[](https://github.com/certctl-io/certctl/releases)
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[](https://github.com/certctl-io/certctl/stargazers)
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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.
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The CA/Browser Forum's [Ballot SC-081v3](https://cabforum.org/2025/04/11/ballot-sc081v3-introduce-schedule-of-reducing-validity-and-data-reuse-periods/) 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.
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> **Status: Early-access.** Production-quality core (Local CA, ACME, agent deployment, CRUD, audit, [role-based authz](docs/operator/rbac.md) with auditor split + day-0 bootstrap + four-eyes approval) with broader feature surface (intermediate CA hierarchy, ACME/SCEP/EST servers, network appliances) still maturing. [Federated identity](docs/operator/auth-threat-model.md#threats-bundle-1-does-not-close) (OIDC/SAML/WebAuthn, server-side sessions, break-glass accounts, JIT elevation) is the next slice on the roadmap, not yet shipped. 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.
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> **Actively maintained, shipping weekly.** [Open an issue](https://github.com/certctl-io/certctl/issues) if something breaks. CI runs the full test suite with race detection, static analysis, and vulnerability scanning on every commit.
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**Ready to try it?** Jump to the [Quick Start](#quick-start). For the marketing site, see [certctl.io](https://certctl.io).
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## Documentation
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The full audience-organized index lives at [`docs/README.md`](docs/README.md). Top-level entry points:
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| Audience | Start here |
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|---|---|
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| New to certctl | [Concepts](docs/getting-started/concepts.md) → [Quickstart](docs/getting-started/quickstart.md) → [Examples](docs/getting-started/examples.md) |
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| Production operator | [Architecture](docs/reference/architecture.md) → [Security posture](docs/operator/security.md) → [Disaster recovery runbook](docs/operator/runbooks/disaster-recovery.md) |
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| PKI engineer | [ACME server](docs/reference/protocols/acme-server.md) → [SCEP server](docs/reference/protocols/scep-server.md) → [EST server](docs/reference/protocols/est.md) → [CA hierarchy](docs/reference/intermediate-ca-hierarchy.md) |
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| Migrating from another tool | [from certbot](docs/migration/from-certbot.md) / [from acme.sh](docs/migration/from-acmesh.md) / [cert-manager coexistence](docs/migration/cert-manager-coexistence.md) |
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| Contributor | [Architecture](docs/reference/architecture.md) → [Testing strategy](docs/contributor/testing-strategy.md) → [CI pipeline](docs/contributor/ci-pipeline.md) |
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For the connector reference (12 issuers, 15 targets, 6 notifiers) see [`docs/reference/connectors/index.md`](docs/reference/connectors/index.md).
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## Screenshots
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<table>
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<tr>
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<td><a href="docs/screenshots/v2-dashboard.png"><img src="docs/screenshots/v2-dashboard.png" width="400" alt="Dashboard"></a><br><b>Dashboard</b><br><sub>Stats, expiration heatmap, renewal trends, issuance rate</sub></td>
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<td><a href="docs/screenshots/v2-certificates.png"><img src="docs/screenshots/v2-certificates.png" width="400" alt="Certificates"></a><br><b>Certificates</b><br><sub>Inventory with bulk ops, status filters, owner/team columns</sub></td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td><a href="docs/screenshots/v2-issuers.png"><img src="docs/screenshots/v2-issuers.png" width="400" alt="Issuers"></a><br><b>Issuers</b><br><sub>Catalog with 10 CA types, GUI config, test connection</sub></td>
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<td><a href="docs/screenshots/v2-jobs.png"><img src="docs/screenshots/v2-jobs.png" width="400" alt="Jobs"></a><br><b>Jobs</b><br><sub>Issuance, renewal, deployment queue with approval workflow</sub></td>
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</tr>
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</table>
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**[See all screenshots →](docs/screenshots/)**
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## Why certctl
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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.
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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?](docs/getting-started/why-certctl.md).
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## What it does
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certctl handles the full certificate lifecycle in one self-hosted control plane:
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- **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](docs/reference/connectors/index.md).
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- **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`](docs/reference/deployment-model.md).
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- **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`](docs/reference/protocols/acme-server.md).
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- **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`](docs/reference/protocols/scep-server.md).
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- **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`](docs/reference/protocols/est.md).
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- **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. See [`docs/reference/intermediate-ca-hierarchy.md`](docs/reference/intermediate-ca-hierarchy.md).
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- **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. Profile-edit changes on approval-tier profiles route through the same gate so the flip-flop bypass is closed. See [`docs/operator/approval-workflow.md`](docs/operator/approval-workflow.md).
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- **Authorize with role-based access control.** Seven default roles (admin, operator, viewer, agent, mcp, cli, auditor) over a 33-permission canonical catalogue with global / per-profile / per-issuer scope. Auditor role is read-only on the audit trail (`audit.read` + `audit.export`, nothing else) so a regulator's key cannot read certificates or mutate config. Day-0 admin via a one-shot `CERTCTL_BOOTSTRAP_TOKEN` endpoint that closes itself the moment any admin lands. Privilege-escalation guard requires `auth.role.assign` to grant or revoke a role. See [`docs/operator/rbac.md`](docs/operator/rbac.md), [`docs/operator/auth-threat-model.md`](docs/operator/auth-threat-model.md), and the v2.0.x → v2.1.0 [migration guide](docs/migration/api-keys-to-rbac.md).
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- **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.
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- **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`](docs/reference/protocols/crl-ocsp.md).
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- **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`](docs/operator/runbooks/expiry-alerts.md).
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- **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. See [`docs/reference/mcp.md`](docs/reference/mcp.md).
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## Architecture and security
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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](docs/reference/architecture.md) for full system diagrams.
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Security: API-key authentication with SHA-256 hashing + constant-time comparison, then role-based authorization on every gated handler with global / per-profile / per-issuer scope. Auditor split keeps regulator-class actors strictly read-only on the audit trail. Day-0 admin via a one-shot bootstrap token; granting or revoking roles requires the dedicated `auth.role.assign` permission. 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`](docs/operator/security.md) for the full posture and [`docs/operator/auth-threat-model.md`](docs/operator/auth-threat-model.md) for what's defended vs deferred.
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## Quick Start
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### Docker Compose (recommended)
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```bash
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git clone https://github.com/certctl-io/certctl.git
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cd certctl
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docker compose -f deploy/docker-compose.yml -f deploy/docker-compose.demo.yml up -d --build
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```
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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.
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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`](deploy/ENVIRONMENTS.md).
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```bash
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curl --cacert $(docker compose -f deploy/docker-compose.yml exec -T certctl-server cat /etc/certctl/tls/ca.crt) https://localhost:8443/health
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# {"status":"healthy"}
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```
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The control plane is HTTPS-only with TLS 1.3 pinned. See [`docs/operator/tls.md`](docs/operator/tls.md) for cert provisioning patterns.
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### Agent install (one-liner)
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```bash
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curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/certctl-io/certctl/master/install-agent.sh | bash
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```
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Detects your OS and architecture, downloads the binary, configures systemd (Linux) or launchd (macOS), and starts the agent. See [install-agent.sh](install-agent.sh).
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### Helm chart (Kubernetes)
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```bash
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helm install certctl deploy/helm/certctl/ \
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--set server.apiKey=your-api-key \
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--set postgres.password=your-db-password
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```
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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](deploy/helm/certctl/values.yaml).
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### Container images
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```bash
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docker pull ghcr.io/certctl-io/certctl-server:latest
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docker pull ghcr.io/certctl-io/certctl-agent:latest
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```
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## Examples
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Pick the scenario closest to your setup and have it running in 2 minutes:
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| Example | Scenario |
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| [`examples/acme-nginx/`](examples/acme-nginx/) | Let's Encrypt + NGINX, HTTP-01 challenges |
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| [`examples/acme-wildcard-dns01/`](examples/acme-wildcard-dns01/) | Wildcard certs via DNS-01 (Cloudflare hook included) |
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| [`examples/private-ca-traefik/`](examples/private-ca-traefik/) | Local CA (self-signed or sub-CA) + Traefik file provider |
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| [`examples/step-ca-haproxy/`](examples/step-ca-haproxy/) | Smallstep step-ca + HAProxy combined PEM |
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| [`examples/multi-issuer/`](examples/multi-issuer/) | ACME for public + Local CA for internal, one dashboard |
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Each directory contains a `docker-compose.yml` and a `README.md` explaining the scenario, prerequisites, and customization.
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## Verifying a release
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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`](docs/reference/release-verification.md).
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## Development
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```bash
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make build # Build server + agent binaries
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make test # Run tests
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make lint # golangci-lint (11 linters)
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govulncheck ./... # Vulnerability scan
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make docker-up # Start Docker Compose stack
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```
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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.
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For the full contributor guide see [`docs/contributor/`](docs/contributor/) — testing strategy, test environment, CI pipeline, QA prerequisites.
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## License
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Licensed under the [Business Source License 1.1](LICENSE). 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.
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For licensing inquiries: certctl@proton.me
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## Dependencies
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```bash
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go list -m all | wc -l # total module count (direct + transitive)
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go mod why <path> # explain why a module is pulled in
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govulncheck ./... # vulnerability scan (CI runs this on every commit)
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```
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The release-time SBOM is published as an SPDX-JSON file alongside each release artifact.
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---
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If certctl solves a problem you have, [star the repo](https://github.com/certctl-io/certctl) to help others find it. Questions, bugs, or feature requests: [open an issue](https://github.com/certctl-io/certctl/issues).
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