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How to issue use-case bound certificates with AWS Private CA

Post Syndicated from Chris Morris original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-issue-use-case-bound-certificates-with-aws-private-ca/

In this post, we’ll show how you can use AWS Private Certificate Authority (AWS Private CA) to issue a wide range of X.509 certificates that are tailored for specific use cases. These use-case bound certificates have their intended purpose defined within the certificate components, such as the Key Usage and Extended Key usage extensions. We will guide you on how you can define your usage by applying your required Key Usage and Extended Key usage values with the IssueCertificate API operation.

Background

With the AWS Private CA service, you can build your own public key infrastructure (PKI) in the AWS Cloud and issue certificates to use within your organization. Certificates issued by AWS Private CA support both the Key Usage and Extended Key Usage extensions. By using these extensions with specific values, you can bind the usage of a given certificate to a particular use case during creation. Binding certificates to their intended use case, such as SSL/TLS server authentication or code signing, provides distinct security benefits such as accountability and least privilege.

When you define certificate usage with specific Key Usage and Extended Key Usage values, this helps your organization understand what purpose a given certificate serves and the use case for which it is bound. During audits, organizations can inspect their certificate’s Key Usage and Extended Key Usage values to determine the certificate’s purpose and scope. This not only provides accountability regarding a certificate’s usage, but also a level of transparency for auditors and stakeholders. Furthermore, by using these extensions with specific values, you will follow the principle of least privilege. You can grant least privilege by defining only the required Key Usage and Extended Key Usage values for your use case. For example, if a given certificate is going to be used only for email protection (S/MIME), you can assign only that extended key usage value to the certificate.

Certificate templates and use cases

In AWS Private CA, the Key Usage and Extended Key Usage extensions and values are specified by using a configuration template, which is passed with the IssueCertificate API operation. The base template provided by AWS handles the most common certificate use cases, such as SSL/TLS server authentication or code signing. However, there are additional use cases for certificates that are not defined in base templates. To issue certificates for these use cases, you can pass blank certificate templates in your IssueCertificate requests, along with your required Key Usage and Extended Key usage values.

Such use cases include, but are not limited to the following:

  • Certificates for SSL/TLS
    • Issue certificates with an Extended Key Usage value of Server Authentication, Client Authentication, or both.
  • Certificates for email protection (S/MIME)
    • Issue certificates with an Extended Key Usage value of E-mail Protection
  • Certificates for smart card authentication (Microsoft Smart Card Login)
    • Issue certificates with an Extended Key Usage value of Smart Card Logon
  • Certificates for document signing
    • Issue certificates with an Extended Key Usage value of Document Signing
  • Certificates for code signing
    • Issue certificates with an Extended Key Usage value of Code Signing
  • Certificates that conform to the Matter connectivity standard

If your certificates require less-common extended key usage values not defined in the AWS documentation, you can also pass object identifiers (OIDs) to define values in Extended Key Usage. OIDs are dotted-string identifiers that are mapped to objects and attributes. OIDs can be defined and passed with custom extensions using API passthrough. You can also define OIDs in a CSR (certificate signing request) with a CSR passthrough template. Such uses include:

  • Certificates that require IPSec or virtual private network (VPN) related extensions
    • Issue certificates with Extended Key Usage values:
      • OID: 1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3.5 (IPSEC_END_SYSTEM)
      • OID: 1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3.6 (IPSEC_TUNNEL)
      • OID: 1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3.7 (IPSEC_USER)
  • Certificates that conform to the ISO/IEC standard for mobile driving license (mDL)
    • Pass the ISO/IEC 18013-5 OID reserved for mDL DS: 1.0.18013.5.1.2 by using custom extensions.

It’s important to note that blank certificate templates aren’t limited to just end-entity certificates. For example, the BlankSubordinateCACertificate_PathLen0_APICSRPassthrough template sets the Basic constraints parameter to CA:TRUE, allowing you to issue a subordinate CA certificate with your own Key Usage and Extended Key Usage values.

Using blank certificate templates

When you browse through the AWS Private CA certificate templates, you may see that base templates don’t allow you to define your own Key Usage or Extended Key Usage extensions and values. They are preset to the extensions and values used for the most common certificate types in order to simplify issuing those types of certificates. For example, when using EndEntityCertificate/V1, you will always get a Key Usage value of Critical, digital signature, key encipherment and an Extended Key Usage value of TLS web server authentication, TLS web client authentication. The following table shows all of the values for this base template.

EndEntityCertificate/V1
X509v3 parameter Value
Subject alternative name [Passthrough from certificate signing request (CSR)]
Subject [Passthrough from CSR]
Basic constraints CA:FALSE
Authority key identifier [Subject key identifier from CA certificate]
Subject key identifier [Derived from CSR]
Key usage Critical, digital signature, key encipherment
Extended key usage TLS web server authentication, TLS web client authentication
CRL distribution points [Passthrough from CA configuration]

When you look at blank certificate templates, you will see that there is more flexibility. For one example of a blank certificate template, BlankEndEntityCertificate_APICSRPassthrough/V1, you can see that there are fewer predefined values compared to EndEntityCertificate/V1. You can pass your own values for Extended Key Usage and Key Usage.

BlankEndEntityCertificate_APICSRPassthrough/V1
X509v3 parameter Value
Subject alternative name [Passthrough from API or CSR]
Subject [Passthrough from API or CSR]
Basic constraints CA:FALSE
Authority key identifier [Subject key identifier from CA certificate]
Subject key identifier [Derived from CSR]
CRL distribution points

Note: CRL distribution points are included in the template only if the CA is configured with CRL generation enabled.

[Passthrough from CA configuration or CSR]

To specify your desired extension and value, you must pass them in the IssueCertificate API call. There are two ways of doing so: the API Passthrough and CSR Passthrough templates.

  • API Passthrough – Extensions and their values defined in the IssueCertificate parameter APIPassthrough are copied over to the issued certificate.
  • CSR Passthrough – Extensions and their values defined in the CSR are copied over to the issued certificate.

To accommodate the different ways of passing these values, there are three varieties of blank certificate templates. If you would like to pass extensions defined only in your CSR file to the issued certificate, you can use the BlankEndEntityCertificate_CSRPassthrough/V1 template. Similarly, if you would like to pass extensions defined only in the APIPassthrough parameter, you can use the BlankEndEntityCertificate_APIPassthrough/V1 template. Finally, if you would like to use a combination of extensions defined in both the CSR and APIPassthrough, you can use the BlankEndEntityCertificate_APICSRPassthrough/V1 template. It’s important to remember these points when choosing your template:

  • The template definition will always have the higher priority over the values specified in the CSR, regardless of what template variety you use. For example, if the template contains a Key Usage value of digital signature and your CSR file contains key encipherment, the certificate will choose the template definition digital signature.
  • API passthrough values are only respected when you use an API passthrough or APICSR passthrough template. CSR passthrough is only respected when you use a CSR passthrough or APICSR passthrough template. When these sources of information are in conflict (the CSR contains the same extension or value as what’s passed in API passthrough), a general rule usually applies: For each extension value, the template definition has highest priority, followed by API passthrough values, followed by CSR passthrough extensions. Read more about the template order of operations in the AWS documentation.

How to issue use-case bound certificates in the AWS CLI

To get started issuing certificates, you must have appropriate AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) permissions as well as an AWS Private CA in an “Active” status. You can verify if your private CA is active by running the aws acm-pca list-certificate-authorities command from the AWS Command Line Interface (CLI). You should see the following:

"Status": "ACTIVE"

After verifying the status, make note of your private CA Amazon Resource Name (ARN).

To issue use-case bound certificates, you must use the Private CA API operation IssueCertificate.

In the AWS CLI, you can call this API by using the command issue-certificate. There are several parameters you must pass with this command:

  • (--certificate-authority-arn) – The ARN of your private CA.
  • (--csr) – The CSR in PEM format. It must be passed as a blob , like fileb://.
  • (--validity) – Sets the “Not After” date (expiration date) for the certificate.
  • (--signing-algorithm) – The signing algorithm to be used to sign the certificate. The value you choose must match the algorithm family of the private CA’s algorithm (RSA or ECDSA). For example, if the private CA uses RSA_2048, the signing algorithm must be an RSA variant, like SHA256WITHRSA.

    You can check your private CA’s algorithm family by referring to its key algorithm. The command aws acm-pca describe-certificate-authority will show the corresponding KeyAlgorithm value.

  • (--template-arn) – This is where the blank certificate template is defined. The template should be an AWS Private CA template ARN. The full list of AWS Private CA template ARNs are shown in the AWS documentation.

We’ll now demonstrate how to issue use-case bound end-entity certificates by using blank end-entity certificate templates. We will issue two different certificates. One will be bound for email protection, and one will be bound for smart card authentication. Email protection and smart card authentication certificates have specific Extended Key Usage values which are not defined by any base template. We’ll use CSR passthrough to issue the smart card authentication certificate and use API passthrough to issue the email protection certificate.

The certificate templates that we will use are:

  • For CSR passthrough: BlankEndEntityCertificate_CSRPassthrough/V1
  • For API Passthrough: BlankEndEntityCertificate_APIPassthrough/V1

Important notes about this demo:

  • These commands are for demo purposes only. Depending on your specific use case, email protection certificates and smart card authentication certificates may require different extensions than what’s shown in this demo.
  • You will be generating RSA 2048 private keys. Private keys need to be protected and stored properly and securely. For example, encrypting private keys or storing private keys in a hardware security module (HSM) are some methods of protection that you can use.
  • We will be using the OpenSSL command line tool, which is installed by default on many operating systems such as Amazon Linux 2023. If you don’t have this tool installed, you can obtain it by using the software distribution facilities of your organization or your operating system, as appropriate.

Use API passthrough

We will now demonstrate how to issue a certificate that is bound for email protection. We’ll specify Key Usage and Extended Key Usage values, and also a subject alternative name through API passthrough. The goal is to have these extensions and values in the email protection certificate.

Extensions:

	X509v3 Key Usage: critical
	Digital Signature, Key Encipherment
	X509v3 Extended Key Usage:
	E-mail Protection
	X509v3 Subject Alternative Name:
	email:[email protected]

To issue a certificate bound for email protection

  1. Use the following command to create your keypair and CSR with OpenSSL. Define your distinguished name in the OpenSSL prompt.
    openssl req -out csr-demo-1.csr -new -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout private-key-demo-1.pem

  2. Use the following command to issue an end-entity certificate specifying the EMAIL_PROTECTION extended key usage value, the Digital Signature and Key Encipherment Key Usage values, and the subject alternative name [email protected]. We will use the Rfc822Name subject alternative name type, because the value is an email address.

    Make sure to replace the data in arn:aws:acm-pca:<region>:<accountID>:certificate-authority/11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111 with your private CA ARN, and adjust the signing algorithm according to your private CA’s algorithm. Assuming my PCA is type RSA, I am using SHA256WITHRSA.

    aws acm-pca issue-certificate --certificate-authority-arn arn:aws:acm-pca:<region>:<accountID>:certificate-authority/11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111 --csr fileb://csr-demo-1.csr --template-arn arn:aws:acm-pca:::template/BlankEndEntityCertificate_APIPassthrough/V1 --signing-algorithm "SHA256WITHRSA" --validity Value=365,Type="DAYS" --api-passthrough "Extensions={ExtendedKeyUsage=[{ExtendedKeyUsageType="EMAIL_PROTECTION"}],KeyUsage={"DigitalSignature"=true,"KeyEncipherment"=true},SubjectAlternativeNames=[{Rfc822Name="[email protected]"}]}"

     If the command is successful, then the ARN of the issued certificate is shown as the result:

    {
        "CertificateArn": "arn:aws:acm-pca:us-east-1:<accountID>:certificate-authority/11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111/certificate/123465789123456789"
    }

  3. Proceed to the Retrieve the Certificate section of this post to retrieve the certificate and certificate chain PEM from the CertificateArn.

Use CSR passthrough

We’ll now demonstrate how to issue a certificate that is bound for smart card authentication. We will specify Key Usage, Extended Key Usage, and subject alternative name extensions and values through CSR passthrough. The goal is to have these values in the smart card authentication certificate.

Extensions:

	X509v3 Key Usage: critical
	Digital Signature
	X509v3 Extended Key Usage:
	TLS Web Client Authentication, Microsoft Smartcard Login
	X509v3 Subject Alternative Name:
	othername: UPN::[email protected]

We’ll generate our CSR by requesting these specific extensions and values with OpenSSL. When we call IssueCertificate, the CSR passthrough template will acknowledge the requested extensions and copy them over to the issued certificate.

To issue a certificate bound for smart card authentication

  1. Use the following command to create the private key.
    openssl genpkey -algorithm RSA -pkeyopt rsa_keygen_bits:2048 -out private-key-demo-2.pem

  2. Create a file called openssl_csr.conf to define the distinguished name and the requested CSR extensions.

    Following is an example of OpenSSL configuration file content. You can copy this configuration to the openssl_csr.conf file and adjust the values to your requirements. You can find further reference on the configuration in the OpenSSL documentation.

    [ req ]
    default_bits = 2048
    prompt = no
    default_md = sha256
    req_extensions = my_req_ext
    distinguished_name = dn
    
    #Specify the Distinguished Name
    [ dn ]
    countryName                     = US
    stateOrProvinceName             = VA 
    localityName                    = Test City
    organizationName                = Test Organization Inc
    organizationalUnitName          = Test Organization Unit
    commonName                      = john_doe
    
    
    #Specify the Extensions
    [ my_req_ext ]
    keyUsage = critical, digitalSignature
    extendedKeyUsage = clientAuth, msSmartcardLogin 
    
    #UPN OtherName OID: "1.3.6.1.4.1.311.20.2.3". Value is ASN1-encoded UTF8 string
    subjectAltName = otherName:msUPN;UTF8:[email protected] 

    In this example, you can specify your Key Usage and Extended Key Usage values in the [ my_req_ext ] section of the configuration. In the extendedKeyUsage line, you may also define extended key usage OIDs, like 1.3.6.1.4.1.311.20.2.2. Possible values are defined in the OpenSSL documentation.

  3. Create the CSR, defining the configuration file.
    openssl req -new -key private-key-demo-2.pem -out csr-demo-2.csr -config openssl_csr.conf

  4. (Optional) You can use the following command to decode the CSR to make sure it contains the information you require.
    openssl req -in csr-demo-2.csr -noout  -text

    The output should show the requested extensions and their values, as follows.

    	X509v3 Key Usage: critical
    	Digital Signature
    	X509v3 Extended Key Usage:
    	TLS Web Client Authentication, Microsoft Smartcard Login
    	X509v3 Subject Alternative Name:
    	othername: UPN:: <your_user_here>

  5. Issue the certificate by using the issue-certificate command. We will use a CSR passthrough template so that the requested extensions and values in the CSR file are copied over to the issued certificate.

    Make sure to replace the data in arn:aws:acm-pca:us-east-1:<accountID>:certificate-authority/11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111 with your private CA ARN and adjust the signing algorithm and validity to for your use case. Assuming my PCA is type RSA, I am using SHA256WITHRSA.

    aws acm-pca issue-certificate --certificate-authority-arn arn:aws:acm-pca:us-east-1:<accountID>:certificate-authority/11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111 --csr fileb://csr-demo-2.csr --template-arn arn:aws:acm-pca:::template/BlankEndEntityCertificate_CSRPassthrough/V1 --signing-algorithm "SHA256WITHRSA" --validity Value=365,Type="DAYS"

    If the command is successful, then the ARN of the issued certificate is shown as the result:

    {
        "CertificateArn": "arn:aws:acm-pca:us-east-1:<accountID>:certificate-authority/11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111/certificate/123465789123456789"
    }

Retrieve the certificate

After using issue-certificate with API passthrough or CSR passthrough, you can retrieve the certificate material in PEM format. Use the get-certificate command and specify the ARN of the private CA that issued the certificate, as well as the ARN of the certificate that was issued:

aws acm-pca get-certificate --certificate-arn arn:aws:acm-pca:us-east-1:<accountID>:certificate-authority/11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111/certificate/123465789123456789 --certificate-authority-arn arn:aws:acm-pca:us-east-1:<accountID>:certificate-authority/11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111 --output text

You can use the --query command with the AWS CLI to get the certificate and certificate chain in separate files.

Certificate

aws acm-pca get-certificate --certificate-authority-arn  arn:aws:acm-pca:us-east-1:<accountID>:certificate-authority/11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111 --certificate-arn arn:aws:acm-pca:us-east-1:<accountID>:certificate-authority/11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111/certificate/123465789123456789 --output text --query Certificate > certfile.pem

Certificate chain

aws acm-pca get-certificate --certificate-authority-arn  arn:aws:acm-pca:us-east-1:<accountID>:certificate-authority/11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111 --certificate-arn arn:aws:acm-pca:us-east-1:<accountID>:certificate-authority/11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111/certificate/123465789123456789 --output text --query CertificateChain > certchain.pem

After you retrieve the certificate, you can decode it with the openssl x509 command. This will allow you to view the details of the certificate, including the extensions and values that you defined.

openssl x509 -in certfile.pem -noout -text

Conclusion

In AWS Private CA, you can implement the security benefits of accountability and least privilege by defining the usage of your certificates. The Key Usage and Extended Key Usage values define the usage of your certificates. Many certificate use cases require a combination of Key Usage and Extended Key Usage values, which cannot be defined with base certificate templates. Some examples include document signing, smart card authentication, and mobile driving license (mDL) certificates. To issue certificates for these specific use cases, you can use blank certificate templates with the IssueCertificate API call. In addition to the blank certificate template, you must also define the specific combination of Key Usage and Extended Key Usage values through CSR passthrough, API passthrough, or both.

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below. If you have questions about this post, contact AWS Support.

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Chris Morris

Chris Morris

Chris is a Cloud Support Engineer at AWS. He specializes in a variety of security topics, including cryptography and data protection. He focuses on helping AWS customers effectively use AWS security services to strengthen their security posture in the cloud. Public key infrastructure and key management are some of his favorite security topics.

Vishal Jakharia

Vishal Jakharia

Vishal is a Cloud Support Engineer based in New Jersey, USA. Having expertise in security services and he loves to work with customer to troubleshoot the complex issues. He helps customers migrate and build secure scalable architecture on the AWS Cloud.

Migrate your Windows PKI from Microsoft Active Directory Certificate Services to AWS Private CA Connector for Active Directory

Post Syndicated from Axel Larsson original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/migrate-your-windows-pki-from-microsoft-active-directory-certificate-services-to-aws-private-ca-connector-for-active-directory/

When you migrate your Windows environment to Amazon Web Services (AWS), you might need to address certificate management for computers and users in your Active Directory domain. Today, Windows administrators commonly use Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) to support this task. In this post, we will show you how to migrate AD CS to AWS Private Certificate Authority by using the AWS Private CA Connector for Active Directory.

AWS Private CA provides a highly available private certificate authority (CA) service without the upfront investment and ongoing maintenance costs of operating your own private CA. Using the APIs that AWS Private CA provides, you can create and deploy private certificates programmatically. You also have the flexibility to create private certificates for applications that require custom certificate lifetimes or resource names. With AWS Private CA, you can create your own CA hierarchy and issue certificates for authenticating internal users, computers, applications, services, servers, and devices and for signing computer code.

Use cases for certificate services that integrate with Active Directory

AD CS is commonly used in enterprise environments because it integrates certificate management with Active Directory authentication, authorization, and policy management. A common use case for AD CS is certificate auto-enrollment. Using AD Group Policies, you can configure certificates to automatically be created for users as they log in to the domain, or you can configure computer certificates, which are associated with each workstation or server that joins the domain. You can then use these certificates for authentication or digital signature purposes. A common use case is for authentication of devices to protected networks, such as wired networks that require 802.1x authentication or wireless networks that are protected by WPA2/3 with EAP-TLS authentication. Auto-enrolled computer and user certificates are also commonly used to authenticate VPN connections.

In addition to certificate auto-enrollment, AD CS also integrates with Active Directory to publish certificate information directly to the user and computer objects in Active Directory. In this way, you can integrate the lifecycle management of the certificates directly into your existing processes for managing the lifecycle of AD users and computers that are joined to the domain.

Options to deploy certificate services that integrate with Active Directory on AWS

To migrate your Windows environment to the cloud, you probably want to retain the capabilities of a CA that integrates with Active Directory. Although you can migrate AD CS directly to AWS and run it on an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance running Windows, we will show you how to use AWS Private CA with the Connector for AD to provide an Active Directory integrated CA that offers the benefits of AD CS without the need to manage AD CS or hardware security modules (HSMs).

Why migrate your on-premises CA to AWS Private CA?

Migrating AD CS to AWS Private CA has several benefits. With AWS Private CA, you get simplified certificate management, eliminating the need for an on-premises CA infrastructure and reducing operational complexity. AWS Private CA provides a managed service, reducing the operational burden and providing high availability and scalability. Additionally, it integrates with other AWS services, so it’s simpler to manage and deploy certificates across your infrastructure. The centralized management, enhanced security features, and simplified workflows in AWS Private CA can streamline certificate issuance and renewal processes, enabling you to more efficiently achieve your security goals.

AWS manages the underlying infrastructure, which can help reduce costs, and automation features help prevent disruptions that expired certificates could cause. AWS Private CA operates as a Regional service with an SLA of 99.9% availability. For environments that require the highest level of availability, you can deploy CAs in multiple AWS Regions by following the guidance on redundancy and disaster recovery in the documentation.

AWS Private CA Connector for AD extends the certificate management of Private CA to AD environments. With the Connector for AD, you can use Private CA to issue certificates for AD users and computers joined to your domain. This includes integration with Windows Group Policy for certificate autoenrollment.

How do I migrate to the Connector for AD?

Transitioning from an existing AD CS server to the Connector for AD involves several steps.

Assessment and planning

Before you begin, identify the use cases for your existing AD CS server and how certificates are issued. In this post, we focus on certificates that are auto-enrolled by using a Group Policy, but you might have other use cases where you must manually enroll certificates by using the Web Enrollment server or APIs. These might include use cases for signing software packages or web server certificates for intranet applications. Start by creating a certificate inventory from your existing AD CS server.

To create a certificate inventory from your existing AD CS server

  1. In the Microsoft CA console, select Issued Certificates.
  2. From the Action menu, select Export List.
     
    Figure 1: Export a list of existing certificates

    Figure 1: Export a list of existing certificates

This produces a CSV file of the certificates that the server issued. To determine which certificates were created as part of an auto-enrollment policy and to identify special cases that require manual attention, sort this file by Certificate Template.

Set up AWS Private CA and the Connector for AD

To complete the initial setup of the Connector for AD, see Getting started with AWS Private CA Connector for Active Directory. When you complete the setup, you can start transitioning enrollment to the new CA.

Configure trust for the new CA

Depending on where you put the new private CA in your organization’s public key infrastructure (PKI) hierarchy, you might want to make sure that its certificate is imported into all of the client trust stores before you issue new certificates using the CA. For Windows devices, creation of the Connector for AD imports the CA certificate into Active Directory, and automatically distributes it to the trust stores of domain-joined computers.

For non-Windows devices, you need to evaluate other use cases for issued certificates on the network and follow vendor instructions for updating trust stores. For example, if you use client certificates for wired 802.1x and Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) enterprise authentication, you need to import the new root CA certificate into the trust stores of the RADIUS servers that you use for authentication.

Export the CA certificate

The next step is to export the certificate by using the AWS Management Console.

To export the certificate

  1. Open the AWS Private CA console.
  2. Navigate to your private CA.
  3. Choose the CA certificate tab.
  4. Select Export certificate body to a file.

    For import into an Active Directory Group Policy Object (GPO), name the exported file with a .cer file extension.

     

    Figure 2: Export the CA certificate

    Figure 2: Export the CA certificate

Transition certificate enrollment to the new CA

After you configure AWS Private CA and the Connector for AD and update your trust stores as necessary, you can begin to transition certificate enrollment to the new CA. In Active Directory domains, certificates are typically created automatically by using an auto-enrollment Group Policy. To migrate enrollment to your new CA, you need to configure certificate templates with the appropriate properties to match your requirements, assign permissions to the templates, and configure the Group Policy to point the enrollment client on Windows devices to the new CA.

Configure certificate templates

Certificate templates define the enrollment policy on a CA. An Active Directory CA only issues certificates that conform to the templates that you have configured. Using the certificate inventory that you collected from your existing AD CS server, you should have a list of certificate templates that are in active use in your environment and that you need to replicate in the Connector for AD.

Start by noting the properties of these certificate templates on your existing AD CS server.

To note the properties of the certificate templates

  1. Open the Certificate Authority console on your AD CS server.
  2. Navigate to the Certificate Templates folder.
  3. From the Action menu, select Manage. This opens the Certificate Templates console, which shows a list of the certificate templates available in Active Directory.
     
    Figure 3: Identify certificate templates

    Figure 3: Identify certificate templates

  4. For each certificate that is in active use, open it and take note of its settings, particularly the following:
    • Template name, validity period, and renewal period from the General tab.
    • Certificate recipient compatibility from the Compatibility tab.
    • Certificate purpose and associated checkboxes in addition to whether a private key is allowed to be exported from the Request Handling tab.
    • Cryptography settings from the Cryptography tab.
    • The extensions configured from the Extensions tab.
    • Settings for certificate subject and subject alternate name from the Subject Name tab.
    • Review the Security tab for the list of Active Directory users and groups that have Enroll or AutoEnroll permissions. The other permission settings, which control which AD principals have the ability to modify or view the template itself, don’t apply to AWS Private CA because IAM authorization is used for these purposes.
       
      Figure 4: Certificate template properties

      Figure 4: Certificate template properties

After you gather the configuration details for the certificate templates that are in active use, you need to configure equivalent templates within the Connector for AD.

To configure templates in the Connector for AD

  1. Open the AWS Private CA console.
  2. Navigate to Private CA Connector for AD.
  3. Select your connector.
  4. In the Templates section, choose Create template.
     
    Figure 5: Certificate template configuration in the Connector for AD

    Figure 5: Certificate template configuration in the Connector for AD

  5. You can then begin configuring your certificate template by using the settings that you obtained from your existing AD CS server. For a complete description of the settings that are available in the certificate template, see Creating a connector template.
     
    Figure 6: Certificate template settings

    Figure 6: Certificate template settings

  6. Assign permissions to the template.

    You must manually enter the Active Directory Security Identifier (SID) of the user or group that you are assigning the Enroll or Auto-enroll permission to. For instructions on how to use PowerShell to obtain the SID of an Active Directory object, see Managing AD groups and permissions for templates.

    We recommend that you initially assign your certificate templates to a small test group that contains a set of Active Directory computers or users that will be used to test the new CA. When you are confident that the new CA issues certificates correctly, you can modify the permissions to include the full set of Active Directory user and computer groups that were assigned to the template on your original AD CS server.

Configure Group Policy for automatic certificate enrollment

With the Connector for AD configured with the required certificate templates, you are ready to configure the AD Group Policy to enable automatic enrollment of user and computer certificates. We suggest that you start with a test organizational unit (OU) in Active Directory, where you can put user and computer objects to make sure that enrollment is working properly. The existing AD CS server and the Connector for AD can continue to coexist until you are ready to replace the certificates.

In this example, you configure a new Group Policy object that is linked to an OU called Test OU, where you will place computer objects for testing.

To configure a new Group Policy object

  1. Within the Group Policy object, locate the settings for controlling enrollment under Computer Configuration  > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Public Key Policies.
     
    Figure 7: Active Directory Group Policy Editor

    Figure 7: Active Directory Group Policy Editor

  2. Configure the Certificate Services Client – Certificate Enrollment Policy to point clients at the URL of the Connector for AD:
    1. Set the Configuration Model to Enabled.
    2. Add a new item to the Certificate enrollment policy list.
       
      Figure 8: Certificate Services Client Group Policy settings

      Figure 8: Certificate Services Client Group Policy settings

  3. Enter the URL of your connector and leave the Authentication mode set to Windows Integrated. Then choose Validate.

    Note: You can find the URL of your connector in the AWS Private CA Connector for AD console under Certificate enrollment policy server endpoint.

    Figure 9: Connector details

    Figure 9: Connector details

  4. After you save your configuration, remove the Active Directory Enrollment Policy from the list so that the Group Policy only references the Connector for AD. A completed configuration will look similar to the following:
     
    Figure 10: Certificate services client settings with Active Directory enrollment policy removed

    Figure 10: Certificate services client settings with Active Directory enrollment policy removed

  5. From within the Group Policy editor, open the Certificate Services Client – Auto-enrollment policy to configure auto-enrollment of computer certificates. Set Configuration Model to Enabled, and select the following:
    • Renew expired certificates, update pending certificates, and remove revoked certificates
    • Update certificates that use certificate templates
       
      Figure 11: Certificate Services client auto-enrollment policy settings

      Figure 11: Certificate Services client auto-enrollment policy settings

After you configure the Group Policy, computers in OUs that the Group Policy is linked to will start automatically enrolling certificates by using AWS Private CA, subject to the permissions defined on the certificate templates. To review the progress of certificate enrollment, use private CA audit reports.

When you complete testing and gain confidence in your certificate roll-out, extend the scope of the GPO and Active Directory permissions on the certificate templates to cover additional users and computers.

Revocation and decommissioning

You can continue to review the Private CA audit reports to confirm progress with auto-enrollment of certificates from the new CA. If you have computers that infrequently connect to the network, this can take some time. As part of this process, address your use cases that aren’t covered by auto-enrollment, which you identified from your initial certificate inventory. These might include web server certificates for internal applications or code-signing certificates for distributing software packages. You can issue replacement certificates for these use cases by using the AWS Private CA APIs or CLI without depending on the Active Directory integration. For more information, see Issuing private end-entity certificates.

After the required certificates have been enrolled and you have confirmed that the services that depend upon those certificates are functioning correctly, it’s time to revoke issued certificates and decommission your existing AD CS server. Microsoft provides detailed documentation for properly revoking certificates and decommissioning an Enterprise CA, including clean-up of related AD objects.

Conclusion

In this post, we covered some use cases for Active Directory integrated certificate management in Windows environments and introduced the new AWS Private CA Connector for Active Directory. AWS Private CA and the Connector for AD can help you reduce operational overhead, enabling you to simplify the process of provisioning certificates while maintaining the Active Directory integration that you are accustomed to in a Microsoft AD CS environment. You learned how to evaluate your existing Microsoft CA and migrate to AWS Private CA with the Connector for AD, with a specific focus on auto-enrollment of certificates, which is commonly used in enterprise environments for device and end-user authentication.

To learn more about the services described in the post, see the documentation for Connector for AD, AWS Private CA , CA best practices and AWS Directory Services. You can get started creating CAs in AWS Private CA by using the console.

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below. If you have questions about this post, start a new thread on the AWS Certificate Manager re:Post or contact AWS Support.

Author

Axel Larsson

Axel is a Principal Solutions Architect at AWS based in the greater New York City area. He supports FinTech customers and is passionate about helping them to establish a secure and compliant foundation on AWS to accelerate their business outcomes. Outside of work, he is an avid tinkerer and enjoys experimenting with home automation.

Jean-Pierre Roux

Jean-Pierre Roux

Jean-Pierre is a Senior Security Consultant who has earned recognition as an ACM subject matter expert. With a specialized focus on the financial services industry, JP helps clients globally to securely use AWS services while aligning with regulatory standards. Outside of work, he enjoys activities such as surfing and gaming, and quality time with family and friends.

De’Shedric Boler

De’Shedric Boler

De’Shedric is a Senior Solutions Architect at AWS. He is part of the account team that supports enterprise customers in their cloud transformation journeys. Passionate about technology, he enjoys helping customers use technology to solve their business challenges.

Bubonke Matandela

Bubonke Matandela

Bubonke is a Professional Services Consultant at AWS based in South Africa, with an interest in security, risk, and governance to assist customers with their AWS Security journeys in the cloud. Outside of work, he enjoys spending time in the kitchen creating hearty dishes.

New report released – Centralized Trust for Decentralized Uses: Revisiting Private Certificate Authorities

Post Syndicated from Katie Collins original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/new_report_released_centralized_trust_for_decentralized_uses/

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is excited to announce the availability of a new sponsored report from S&P Global Market Intelligence 451 Research, Centralized Trust for Decentralized Uses: Revisiting Private Certificate Authorities. We heard from customers actively seeking centralized management solutions for multi-cloud environments and worked with 451 Research, a technology research solution that provides a holistic view of opportunities and risks across the enterprise technology landscape, to dive into this topic.

In the report, 451 Research highlights the need for centralized trust as organizations build applications across multiple cloud providers, local infrastructure, and distributed hosting environments. For security practitioners familiar with certificate authorities (CAs), this report looks at some of the wider business implications of using cryptographic certificates to establish trust in highly decentralized and dynamic environments.

451 Research explains how decentralized architectures, including technologies such as Kubernetes, service meshes, and Internet of Things (IoT) networks, are fueling the need to modernize the legacy approach to CAs. The growing adoption of cloud native solutions from a multitude of vendors leads to a greater decentralization of applications. According to the survey Voice of the Enterprise: DevOps, Developer Experience 2023, 59% of respondent companies have architected more than 50% of their applications with cloud-native technologies.

Organizations and developers can use the report to consider the following:

For more information, read the full report Centralized Trust for Decentralized Uses: Revisiting Private Certificate Authorities. You can also learn more about how to create private certificates to identify resources and protect data with AWS Private Certificate Authority.

 
If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below. If you have questions about this post, contact AWS Support.

Want more AWS Security news? Follow us on Twitter.

Katie Collins

Katie Collins

Katie is a Product Marketing Manager in AWS Security, where she brings her enthusiastic curiosity to deliver products that drive value for customers. Her experience also includes product management at both startups and large companies. With a love for travel, Katie is always eager to visit new places while enjoying a great cup of coffee.

Rushir Patel

Rushir Patel

Rushir is a Senior Security Specialist at AWS, focused on data protection and cryptography services. His goal is to make complex topics simple for customers and help them adopt better security practices. Before joining AWS, he worked in security product management at IBM and Bank of America.

How to enforce DNS name constraints in AWS Private CA

Post Syndicated from Isaiah Schisler original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-enforce-dns-name-constraints-in-aws-private-ca/

In March 2022, AWS announced support for custom certificate extensions, including name constraints, using AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) Private Certificate Authority (CA). Defining DNS name constraints with your subordinate CA can help establish guardrails to improve public key infrastructure (PKI) security and mitigate certificate misuse. For example, you can set a DNS name constraint that restricts the CA from issuing certificates to a resource that is using a specific domain name. Certificate requests from resources using an unauthorized domain name will be rejected by your CA and won’t be issued a certificate.

In this blog post, I’ll walk you step-by-step through the process of applying DNS name constraints to a subordinate CA by using the AWS Private CA service.

Prerequisites

You need to have the following prerequisite tools, services, and permissions in place before following the steps presented within this post:

  1. AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) permissions with full access to AWS Certificate Manager and AWS Private CA. The corresponding AWS managed policies are named AWSCertificateManagerFullAccess and AWSCertificateManagerPrivateCAFullAccess.
  2. AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) 2.9.13 or later installed.
  3. Python 3.7.15 or later installed.
  4. Python’s package manager, pip, 20.2.2 or later installed.
  5. An existing deployment of AWS Private CA with a root and subordinate CA.
  6. The Amazon Resource Names (ARN) for your root and subordinate CAs.
  7. The command-line JSON processor jq.
  8. The Git command-line tool.
  9. All of the examples in this blog post are provided for the us-west-2 AWS Region. You will need to make sure that you have access to resources in your desired Region and specify the Region in the example commands.

Retrieve the solution code

Our GitHub repository contains the Python code that you need in order to replicate the steps presented in this post. There are two methods for cloning the repository provided, HTTPS or SSH. Select the method that you prefer.

To clone the solution repository using HTTPS

  • Run the following command in your terminal.
    git clone https://github.com/aws-samples/aws-private-ca-enforce-dns-name-constraints.git

To clone the solution repository using SSH

  • Run the following command in your terminal.
    git clone [email protected]:aws-samples/aws-private-ca-enforce-dns-name-constraints.git

Set up your Python environment

Creating a Python virtual environment will allow you to run this solution in a fresh environment without impacting your existing Python packages. This will prevent the solution from interfering with dependencies that your other Python scripts may have. The virtual environment has its own set of Python packages installed. Read the official Python documentation on virtual environments for more information on their purpose and functionality.

To create a Python virtual environment

  1. Create a new directory for the Python virtual environment in your home path.
    mkdir ~/python-venv-for-aws-private-ca-name-constraints

  2. Create a Python virtual environment using the directory that you just created.
    python -m venv ~/python-venv-for-aws-private-ca-name-constraints

  3. Activate the Python virtual environment.
    source ~/python-venv-for-aws-private-ca-name-constraints/bin/activate

  4. Upgrade pip to the latest version.
    python -m pip install --upgrade pip

To install the required Python packages

  1. Navigate to the solution source directory. Make sure to replace <~/github> with your information.
    cd <~/github>/aws-private-ca-name-constraints/src/

  2. Install the necessary Python packages and dependencies. Make sure to replace <~/github> with your information.
    pip install -r <~/github>/aws-private-ca-name-constraints/src/requirements.txt

Generate the API passthrough file with encoded name constraints

This step allows you to define the permitted and excluded DNS name constraints to apply to your subordinate CA. Read the documentation on name constraints in RFC 5280 for more information on their usage and functionality.

The Python encoder provided in this solution accepts two arguments for the permitted and excluded name constraints. The -p argument is used to provide the permitted subtrees, and the -e argument is used to provide the excluded subtrees. Use commas without spaces to separate multiple entries. For example: -p .dev.example.com,.test.example.com -e .prod.dev.example.com,.amazon.com.

To encode your name constraints

  1. Run the following command, and update <~/github> with your information and provide your desired name constraints for the permitted (-p) and excluded (-e) arguments.
    python <~/github>/aws-private-ca-name-constraints/src/name-constraints-encoder.py -p <.dev.example.com,.test.example.com> -e <.prod.dev.example.com>

  2. If the command runs successfully, you will see the message “Successfully Encoded Name Constraints” and the name of the generated API passthrough JSON file. The output of Permitted Subtrees will show the domain names you passed with the -p argument, and Excluded Subtrees will show the domain names you passed with the -e argument in the previous step.
    Figure 1: Command line output example for name-constraints-encoder.py

    Figure 1: Command line output example for name-constraints-encoder.py

  3. Use the following command to display the contents of the API passthrough file generated by the Python encoder.
    cat <~/github>/aws-private-ca-name-constraints/src/api_passthrough_config.json | jq .

  4. The contents of api_passthrough_config.json will look similar to the following screenshot. The JSON object will have an ObjectIdentifier key and value of 2.5.29.30, which represents the name constraints OID from the Global OID database. The base64-encoded Value represents the permitted and excluded name constraints you provided to the Python encoder earlier.
    Figure 2: Viewing contents of api_passthrough_config.json

    Figure 2: Viewing contents of api_passthrough_config.json

Generate a CSR from your subordinate CA

You must generate a certificate signing request (CSR) from the subordinate CA to which you intend to have the name constraints applied. Otherwise, you might encounter errors when you attempt to install the new certificate with name constraints.

To generate the CSR

  1. Update and run the following command with your subordinate CA ARN and Region. The ARN is something that uniquely identifies AWS resources, similar to how your home address tells the mail person where to deliver the mail. In this case, the ARN is the unique identifier for your subordinate CA that tells the command which subordinate CA it’s interacting with.
    aws acm-pca get-certificate-authority-csr \
    --certificate-authority-arn <arn:aws:acm-pca:us-west-2:111111111111:certificate-authority/cdd22222-2222-2f22-bb2e-222f222222ab> \
    --output text \
    --region <us-west-2> > ca.csr 

  2. View your subordinate CA’s CSR.
    openssl req -text -noout -verify -in ca.csr

  3. The following screenshot provides an example output for a CSR. Your CSR details will be different; however, you should see something similar. Look for verify OK in the output and make sure that the Subject details match your subordinate CA. The subject details will provide the country, state, and city. The details will also likely contain your organization’s name, organizational unit or department name, and a common name for the subordinate CA.
    Figure 3: Reviewing CSR content using openssl

    Figure 3: Reviewing CSR content using openssl

Use the root CA to issue a new certificate with the name constraints custom extension

This post uses a two-tiered certificate authority architecture for simplicity. However, you can use the steps in this post with a more complex multi-level CA architecture. The name constraints certificate will be generated by the root CA and applied to the intermediary CA.

To issue and download a certificate with name constraints

  1. Run the following command, making sure to update the argument values in red italics with your information. Make sure that the certificate-authority-arn is that of your root CA.
    • Note that the provided template-arn instructs the root CA to use the api_passthrough_config.json file that you created earlier to generate the certificate with the name constraints custom extension. If you use a different template, the new certificate might not be created as you intended.
    • Also, note that the validity period provided in this example is 5 years or 1825 days. The validity period for your subordinate CA must be less than that of your root CA.
    aws acm-pca issue-certificate \
    --certificate-authority-arn <arn:aws:acm-pca:us-west-2:111111111111:certificate-authority/111f1111-ba1b-1111-b11d-11ce1a11afae> \
    --csr fileb://ca.csr \
    --signing-algorithm <SHA256WITHRSA> \
    --template-arn arn:aws:acm-pca:::template/SubordinateCACertificate_PathLen0_APIPassthrough/V1 \
    --api-passthrough file://api_passthrough_config.json \
    --validity Value=<1825>,Type=<DAYS> \
    --region <us-west-2>

  2. If the issue-certificate command is successful, the output will provide the ARN of the new certificate that is issued by the root CA. Copy the certificate ARN, because it will be used in the following command.
    Figure 4: Issuing a certificate with name constraints from the root CA using the AWS CLI

    Figure 4: Issuing a certificate with name constraints from the root CA using the AWS CLI

  3. To download the new certificate, run the following command. Make sure to update the placeholders in red italics with your root CA’s certificate-authority-arn, the certificate-arn you obtained from the previous step, and your region.
    aws acm-pca get-certificate \
    --certificate-authority-arn <arn:aws:acm-pca:us-west-2:111111111111:certificate-authority/111f1111-ba1b-1111-b11d-11ce1a11afae> \
    --certificate-arn <arn:aws:acm-pca:us-west-2:11111111111:certificate-authority/111f1111-ba1b-1111-b11d-11ce1a11afae/certificate/c555ced55c5a55aaa5f555e5555fd5f5> \
    --region <us-west-2> \
    --output json > cert.json

  4. Separate the certificate and certificate chain into two separate files by running the following commands. The new subordinate CA certificate is saved as cert.pem and the certificate chain is saved as cert_chain.pem.
    cat cert.json | jq -r .Certificate > cert.pem 
    cat cert.json | jq -r .CertificateChain > cert_chain.pem

  5. Verify that the certificate and certificate chain are valid and configured as expected.
    openssl x509 -in cert.pem -text -noout
    openssl x509 -in cert_chain.pem -text -noout

  6. The x509v3 Name Constraints portion of cert.pem should match the permitted and excluded name constraints you provided to the Python encoder earlier.
    Figure 5: Verifying the X509v3 name constraints in the newly issued certificate using openssl

    Figure 5: Verifying the X509v3 name constraints in the newly issued certificate using openssl

Install the name constraints certificate on the subordinate CA

In this section, you will install the name constraints certificate on your subordinate CA. Note that this will replace the existing certificate installed on the subordinate CA. The name constraints will go into effect as soon as the new certificate is installed.

To install the name constraints certificate

  1. Run the following command with your subordinate CA’s certificate-authority-arn and path to the cert.pem and cert_chain.pem files you created earlier.
    aws acm-pca import-certificate-authority-certificate \
    --certificate-authority-arn <arn:aws:acm-pca:us-west-2:111111111111:certificate-authority/111f1111-ba1b-1111-b11d-11ce1a11afae> \
    --certificate fileb://cert.pem \
    --certificate-chain fileb://cert_chain.pem 

  2. Run the following command with your subordinate CA’s certificate-authority-arn and region to get the CA’s status.
    aws acm-pca describe-certificate-authority \
    --certificate-authority-arn <arn:aws:acm-pca:us-west-2:111111111111:certificate-authority/cdd22222-2222-2f22-bb2e-222f222222ab> \
    --region <us-west-2> \
    --output json

  3. The output from the previous command will be similar to the following screenshot. The CertificateAuthorityConfiguration and highlighted NotBefore and NotAfter fields in the output should match the name constraints certificate.
    Figure 6: Verifying subordinate CA details using the AWS CLI

    Figure 6: Verifying subordinate CA details using the AWS CLI

Test the name constraints

Now that your subordinate CA has the new certificate installed, you can test to see if the name constraints are being enforced based on the certificate you installed in the previous section.

To request a certificate from your subordinate CA and test the applied name constraints

  1. To request a new certificate, update and run the following command with your subordinate CA’s certificate-authority-arn, region, and desired certificate subject in the domain-name argument.
    aws acm request-certificate \
    --certificate-authority-arn <arn:aws:acm-pca:us-west-2:111111111111:certificate-authority/cdd22222-2222-2f22-bb2e-222f222222ab> \
    --region <us-west-2> \
    --domain-name <app.prod.dev.example.com>

  2. If the request-certificate command is successful, it will output a certificate ARN. Take note of this ARN, because you will need it in the next step.
  3. Update and run the following command with the certificate-arn from the previous step and your region to get the status of the certificate request.
    aws acm describe-certificate \
    --certificate-arn <arn:aws:acm:us-west-2:11111111111:certificate/f11aa1dc-1111-1d1f-1afd-4cb11111b111> \
    --region <us-west-2>

  4. You will see output similar to the following screenshot if the requested certificate domain name was not permitted by the name constraints applied to your subordinate CA. In this example, a certificate for app.prod.dev.example.com was rejected. The Status shows “FAILED” and the FailureReason indicates “PCA_NAME_CONSTRAINTS_VALIDATION”.
    Figure 7: Verifying the status of the certificate request using the AWS CLI describe-certificate command

    Figure 7: Verifying the status of the certificate request using the AWS CLI describe-certificate command

Conclusion

In this blog post, you learned how to apply and test DNS name constraints in AWS Private CA. For additional information on this topic, review the AWS documentation on understanding certificate templates and instructions on how to issue a certificate with custom extensions using an APIPassthrough template. If you prefer to use code in Java language format, see Activate a subordinate CA with the NameConstraints extension.

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below. If you have questions about this post, start a new thread on the AWS Security, Identity, & Compliance re:Post or contact AWS Support.

Want more AWS Security news? Follow us on Twitter.

Isaiah Schisler

Isaiah Schisler

Isaiah is a Security Consultant with AWS Professional Services. He’s an Air Force Veteran and currently helps organizations secure their cloud environments. He is passionate about security and automation.

Raul Radu

Raul Radu

Raul is a Senior Security Consultant with AWS Professional Services. He helps organizations secure their AWS environments and workloads in the cloud. He is passionate about privacy and security in a connected world.

How to enforce multi-party approval for creating Matter-compliant certificate authorities

Post Syndicated from Ram Ramani original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-enforce-multi-party-approval-for-creating-matter-compliant-certificate-authorities/

Customers who build smart home devices using the Matter protocol from the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) need to create and maintain digital certificates, called device attestation certificates (DACs), to allow their devices to interoperate with devices from other vendors. DACs must be issued by a Matter device attestation certificate authority (CA). The CSA mandates multi-party approval for creating Matter compliant CAs. You can use AWS Private CA to create your Matter device attestation CA, which will store two important certificates: the product attestation authority (PAA) and product attestation intermediate (PAI) certificate. The PAA is the root CA that signs the PAI; the PAI is the intermediate CA that issues DACs. In this blog post, we will show how to implement multi-party approval for creation of these two certificates within AWS Private CA.

The CSA allows the use of delegated service providers (DSP) to provide you with public key infrastructure (PKI) services to create your Matter device attestation CA. You can use AWS Private CA as a DSP to create a Matter device attestation CA to issue DACs.

You should carefully plan to implement and demonstrate compliance with the Matter PKI Certificate Policy (CP) requirements when you issue Matter certificates by using the CA infrastructure services provided by AWS Private CA. Matter PKI CP is not just a technical standard; it also covers people, processes, and technology. For information about the requirements to comply with the Matter PKI CP and a reference list of acronyms, see the Matter PKI Compliance Guide. In this blog post, we address one of the Matter requirements for technical security controls for implementing multi-party approval for the creation of PAA and PAI certificates

Note: The solution presented in this post uses AWS Systems Manager Change Manager, a capability of AWS Systems Manager, for demonstrating multi-party approval as required by the Matter CP for the creation of the PAA and PAI. Additionally, the solution also uses AWS Systems Manager documents (SSM documents), which contain the code to automate the creation of PAA and PAI DAC certificates.

Implementing multi-party approval: Personas and IAM roles

For the process of achieving the multi-party approval required for Matter compliance, we will use the following human personas:

  • Jane Doe and Paulo Santos as the two approvers responsible for signing off on the creation of PAA and PAI.
  • Shirley Rodriguez as the persona responsible for setting up the prerequisite infrastructure and creating the change template that governs the multi-party approval process and specifying the human personas who are authorized to approve change requests.
  • Richard Roe as the persona responsible for reviewing and approving change template changes made by Shirley Rodriguez, to verify the separation of duties.

AWS offers support for identity federation to enable federated single sign-on (SSO). This allows users to sign into the AWS Management Console or call AWS API operations by using the credentials of an IAM role. To establish a secure authentication and authorization model, we highly recommend that you map the identities of the human personas to IAM roles.

As a prerequisite, Shirley Rodriguez will create the following AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles that support the multi-party approval operations:

  • TmpltReview-Role — Richard Roe will assume this role to review and approve changes to the change template that is used to run the SSM document to create the matter CAs.
  • CreatePAA-Role and CreatePAI-Role — Clone the solution GitHub repository and create the roles by using the policies from the repository:
    • CreatePAA-Role — This role is assumed by the AWS Systems Manager service to create the PAA.
    • CreatePAI-Role — This role is assumed by the AWS Systems Manager service to create the PAI.
  • MatterCA-Admin-1 and MatterCA-Admin-2 — Jane Doe will use the MatterCA-Admin-1 role, while Paulo Santos will use the MatterCA-Admin-2 role. These individuals will serve as the two approvers for the multi-party approval process.

Note: It’s important that one person cannot approve an action by themselves. If a person is allowed to assume the MatterCA-Admin-1 role, they must not be allowed to assume the MatterCA-Admin-2 role also. If the same person can assume both roles, then that person can bypass the requirement for two different people to approve.

To create the IAM roles

  1. Create IAM roles MatterCA-Admin-1 and MatterCA-Admin-2, and attach the following AWS-managed policies:
  2. You should configure the trust relationship to allow Jane Doe to use the Matter-CA-Admin-1-Role and Paulo Santos to use the Matter-CA-Admin-2-Role for the multi-party approval process. This is intended to restrict Jane Doe and Paulo Santos from assuming each other’s roles. Use the following policy as a guide, and make sure to replace <AccountNumber> and <Role_Name> with your own information, depending on the federated identity models that you have chosen.
    {
    
        "Version": "2012-10-17",
        "Statement": [
            {
                "Effect": "Allow",
                "Principal": {
                    "AWS": "aws:PrincipalARN":"arn:aws:iam::<AccountNumber>:role/<Role-Name>"
                },
                "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
            }
        ]
    }
  3. Create the IAM role TmpltReview-Role, and attach the following policies.
    • AmazonSSMReadOnlyAccess
    • Attach the following custom inline policy to enable review and approval of the change template.
    {
        "Version": "2012-10-17",
        "Statement": [
            {
                "Sid": "TemplateReviewer",
                "Effect": "Allow",
                "Action": "ssm:UpdateDocumentMetadata",
                "Resource": "*"
            }
        ]
    }
  4. Modify the trust relationship to allow only Richard Roe to use the role, as shown in the following policy. Make sure to replace <AccountNumber> and <Role-Name> with your own information.
    {
        "Version": "2012-10-17",
        "Statement": [
            {
                "Effect": "Allow",
                "Principal": {
                    "AWS":"aws:PrincipalARN":"arn:aws:iam::<AccountNumber>:role/<Role-Name>"
                },
                "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
            }
        ]
    }
  5. Create the IAM role CreatePAA-Role, which will be used by the AWS Systems Manager change template to run the SSM document to create PAA.
    1. Attach the following inline policy to the CreatePAA-Role.
      {
          "Version": "2012-10-17",
          "Statement": [
              {
                  "Effect": "Allow",
                  "Action": [
                      "acm-pca:ImportCertificateAuthorityCertificate",
                      "acm-pca:IssueCertificate",
                      "acm-pca:CreateCertificateAuthority",
                      "acm-pca:GetCertificate",
                      "acm-pca:GetCertificateAuthorityCsr",
                      "acm-pca:DescribeCertificateAuthority"
                  ],
                  "Resource": "*"
              }
          ]
      }
    2. Modify the trust relationship for CreatePAA-Role to allow only the AWS Systems Manager service to assume this role, as shown following.
      {
      
      
          "Version": "2012-10-17",
          "Statement": [
              {
                  "Effect": "Allow",
                  "Principal": {
                      "Service": "ssm.amazonaws.com"
                  },
                  "Action": "sts:AssumeRole",
                  "Condition": {}
              }
          ]
  6. Create the IAM role CreatePAI-Role, which will be used by the change template to run the SSM document to create the PAI certificate.
    1. Attach the following policy as an inline policy on the CreatePAI-Role.
      {
          "Version": "2012-10-17",
          "Statement": [
              {
                  "Effect": "Allow",
                  "Action": [
                      "acm-pca:ImportCertificateAuthorityCertificate",
                      "acm-pca:CreateCertificateAuthority",
                      "acm-pca:GetCertificateAuthorityCsr",
                      "acm-pca:DescribeCertificateAuthority"
                  ],
                  "Resource": "*"
              },
              {
                  "Effect": "Allow",
                  "Action": [
                      "acm-pca:GetCertificateAuthorityCertificate",
                      "acm-pca:GetCertificate",
                      "acm-pca:IssueCertificate"
                  ],
                  "Resource": “*”
              }
          ]
      }
  7. Modify the trust relationship for CreatePAI-Role to allow only AWS Systems Manager to assume this role, as shown following.
    {
        "Version": "2012-10-17",
        "Statement": [
            {
                "Effect": "Allow",
                "Principal": {
                    "Service": "ssm.amazonaws.com"
                },
                "Action": "sts:AssumeRole",
                "Condition": {}
            }
        ]
    }
    

Preventive security controls recommended for this solution

We recommend that you apply the following security controls for this solution:

  • Dedicate an AWS account to this solution – It is important that the only users who can perform actions on the PAA and PAI are the users in this account. By deploying these items in a dedicated AWS account, you limit the number of users who might have elevated privileges, but don’t have cause to use those privileges here.
  • SCPs (service control policies) – The IAM policies in this solution do not prevent someone with privileges, such as an administrator, from bypassing your expected controls and approving usage of the CA. SCPs, if they are applied by using AWS Organizations, can restrict the creation of CAs (certificate authorities) exclusively to CreatePAA-Role and CreatePAI-Role.

    The following example SCP will enforce this type of restriction. Make sure to replace <AccountNumber> with your own information. With a strong SCP, even the root account will not be able to perform these operations or change these security controls.

    {
        "Version": "2012-10-17",
        "Statement": [
            {
                "Sid": "RestrictCACreation",
                "Effect": "Deny",
                "Action": ["acm-pca:CreateCertificateAuthority"],
                "Resource": "*",
                "Condition": {
                    "StringNotLike": {
                        "aws:PrincipalARN": [
                            "arn:aws:iam::<AccountNumber>:role/CreatePAA-Role",
                            "arn:aws:iam::<AccountNumber>:role/CreatePAI-Role"
                        ]
                    }
                }
            }
        ]
     }

AWS Systems Manager configuration

Shirley Rodriguez will download the following sample Systems Manager (SSM) documents from our GitHub repository and perform the listed steps in this section.

The content in these yaml files will be used in the next steps to create SSM documents.

Create the SSM document

The first step is to create the SSM document that automates resource creation of the PAA and PAI in AWS Private CA.

To create the SSM document

  1. Open the Systems Manager console.
  2. In the left navigation pane, under Shared Resources, choose Documents.
  3. Choose the Owned by me tab, choose Create document, and from the dropdown list, choose Automation.
    Figure 1: Create the automation document

    Figure 1: Create the automation document

  4. Under Create automation, choose the Editor tab, and then choose Edit.
    Figure 2: Automation document editor

    Figure 2: Automation document editor

  5. Copy the sample automation code from the file CreatePAA.yaml that you downloaded from the GitHub repository, and paste it into the editor.
  6. For Name, enter CreatePAA, and then choose Create automation.
  7. To check that the CreatePAA document was created successfully, choose the Owned by me tab. You should see the Systems Manager document, as shown in Figure 3.
    Figure 3: Successful creation of the CreatePAA document

    Figure 3: Successful creation of the CreatePAA document

  8. Repeat the preceding steps for creating the PAI. Make sure that you paste the code from the file CreatePAI.yaml into the editor and enter the name CreatePAI to create the PAI CA.
  9. To check that the CreatePAI document was created successfully, choose the Owned by me tab. You should see the CreatePAI Systems Manager document, as shown in Figure 4.
    Figure 4: Successful creation of the PAA and PAI documents

    Figure 4: Successful creation of the PAA and PAI documents

You’ve now completed the creation of an SSM document that contains the automation code to create certificate authorities PAA and PAI. The next step is to create Change Manager templates, which will use the SSM document and apply multi-party approval before the creation of the PAA and PAI.

Create the Change Manager templates

Shirley Rodriguez will next create two change templates that run the SSM documents: one for the PAA and one for the PAI.

To create the change templates

  1. Open the Systems Manager console.
  2. In the left navigation pane, under Change Management, choose Change Manager.
  3. On the Change Manager page, in the top right, choose Create template.
  4. For Name, enter CreatePAATemplate.
  5. In the Builder section, add a description (optional), and for Runbook, search and select CreatePAA. Keep the defaults for the other selections.
    Figure 5: Select the runbook CreatePAA in the change template

    Figure 5: Select the runbook CreatePAA in the change template

  6. Scroll down to the Change request approvals section and choose Add approval level. This is where you configure multi-party approval for the change template.
  7. Because there are two approvers, for Number of approvers required at this level, choose 1 from the dropdown.
  8. Choose Add approver, choose Template specified approvers, and then select the MatterCA-Admin-1. Then choose Add another approval level for the second approver.
    Figure 6: Add first level approver for the template

    Figure 6: Add first level approver for the template

  9. Choose Template specified approvers, and then select the MatterCA-Admin-2 role for multi-party approval. These roles can now approve the change request.
    Figure 7: Add second level approver for the template.

    Figure 7: Add second level approver for the template.

  10. Keep the defaults for the rest of the options, and at the bottom of the screen, choose Save and preview.
  11. On the preview screen, review the configurations, and then on the top right, choose Submit for review. This pushes the template to be reviewed by template reviewer Richard Roe. In the Templates tab, the template status shows as Pending review.
    Figure 8: Template with a status of pending review

    Figure 8: Template with a status of pending review

  12. Repeat the preceding steps to create the PAI change template. Make sure to name it CreatePAITemplate, and at step 5, for Runbook, select the CreatePAI document.
    Figure 9: Both templates ready for review

    Figure 9: Both templates ready for review

You’ve successfully created two change templates, CreatePAATemplate and CreatePAITemplate, that generate a change request that contains an SSM document with automation code for building the PAA and PAI. These change requests are configured with multi-party approval before running the SSM document. However, before you can proceed with running the change template, it must undergo review and approval by the template reviewer Richard Roe.

Review and approve the Change Manager templates

First you need to make sure that TmpltReview-Role is added as a reviewer and approver of change templates. Shirley Rodriguez will follow the steps in this section to add TmpltReview-Role as change template reviewer.

To add the change template reviewer

  1. Follow the instructions in the Systems Manager documentation to configure the IAM role TmpltReview-Role to review and approve the change template. Figure 10 shows how this setup looks in the Systems Manager console.
    Figure 10: The template reviewer role in Settings

    Figure 10: The template reviewer role in Settings

    Now you have TmpltReview-Role added as a reviewer. Change templates that are created or modified will now need to be reviewed and approved by this role. Richard Roe will use the role TmpltReview-Role for governance of change templates, to make sure changes made by Shirley Rodriguez are in alignment with the organization’s compliance needs for Matter.

  2. Richard Roe will follow the steps in the Systems Manager documentation for reviewing and approving change templates, to approve CreatePAATemplate and CreatePAITemplate. After the change template is approved, its status changes to Approved, and it’s ready to be run.
    Figure 11: Change template approval details

    Figure 11: Change template approval details

You now have the change templates CreatePAATemplate and CreatePAITemplate in approved status.

Create the PAA and PAI with multi-party approval for Matter compliance

Up to this point, these instructions have described one-time configurations of AWS Systems Manager to set up the IAM roles, SSM documents, and change templates that are required to enforce multi-party approval. Now you are ready to use these change templates to create the PAA and PAI and perform multi-party approval.

Shirley Rodriguez will generate change requests that require approval from Jane Doe and Paulo Santos. This manual approval process will then run the SSM documents to create the PAA and PAI.

Create a change request for the PAA

Perform the following steps to create a change request for the PAA.

To create a change request for the PAA

  1. Open the Systems Manager console.
  2. In the left navigation pane, choose Change Manager, and then choose Create request.
  3. Search for and select CreatePAATemplate, and then choose Next.
  4. For Name, enter the name CreatePAA_ChangeRequest.
  5. (Optional) For Change request information, provide additional information about the change request.
  6. For Workflow start time, choose Run the operation as soon as possible after approval to run the change immediately after the request is approved.
  7. For Change request approvals, validate that the list of First-level approvals includes the change request approvers MatterCA-Admin-1 and MatterCA-Admin-2, which you configured previously in the section Create Change Manager template. Then choose Next.
    Figure 12: Change request approvers

    Figure 12: Change request approvers

  8. For Automation assume role, select the IAM role CreatePAA_Role for creating the PAA.
    Figure 13: Change request role

    Figure 13: Change request role

  9. For Runbook parameters, enter the PAA certificate details for CommonName, Organization, VendorId, and ValidityInYears, and then choose Next.
  10. Review the change request content and then, at the bottom of the screen, choose Submit for approval. Optionally, you can set up an SNS topic to notify the approvers.

You have successfully created a change request that is currently awaiting approval from Jane Doe and Paulo Santos. Let’s now move on to the approval steps.

Multi-party approval: Approve the change request for the PAA

Each of the approvers should now follow the steps in this section for approval. Jane Doe will use the IAM role MatterCA-Admin-1, while Paulo Santos will need to use the IAM role MatterCA-Admin-2.

To approve the change request for the PAA

  1. Open the Systems Manager console and do the following.
    1. In the navigation pane, choose Change Manager.
    2. Choose the Approvals tab, select the CreatePAA change request, and then choose Approve.
    Figure 14: Change request approval

    Figure 14: Change request approval

    After Jane Doe and Paulo Santos each follow these steps to approve the change request, the change request will run and will complete with status “Success,” and the PAA will be created in AWS Private CA.

  2. Check that the status of the change request is Success, as shown in Figure 15.
    Figure 15: The change request ran successfully

    Figure 15: The change request ran successfully

Validate that the PAA is created in AWS Private CA

Next, you need to validate that the PAA was created successfully and copy its Amazon Resource Name (ARN) to use for PAI creation.

To validate the creation of the PAA and retrieve its ARN

  1. In the AWS Private CA console, choose the PAA CA that you created in the previous step.
  2. Copy the ARN of the PAA root CA. You will use PAA CA ARN when you set up the PAI change request.
    Figure 16: ARN of the PAA root CA PAA

    Figure 16: ARN of the PAA root CA PAA

After successfully completing these steps, you have created the certificate authority PAA by using AWS Private CA with multi-party approval. You can now proceed to the next section, where we will demonstrate how to use this PAA to issue a CA for PAI.

Create a change request for the PAI

Perform the following steps to create a change request for the PAI.

Note: Creation of a valid PAA is a prerequisite for creating the PAI in the following steps.

To create a change request for the PAI

  1. After the PAA is created successfully, you can complete the creation of the PAI by repeating the same steps that you did in the Create a change request for the PAA section, but with the following changes:
    1. At step 3, make sure that you search for and select CreatePAITemplate.
      Figure 17: CreatePAITemplate template

      Figure 17: CreatePAITemplate template

    2. At step 4, for Name, enter CreatePAI_ChangeRequest.
    3. At step 8, for Automation assume role, select the IAM role CreatePAI_Role.
      Figure 18: Change request IAM role selection

      Figure 18: Change request IAM role selection

    4. At step 9, for Runbook parameters, enter the PAA CA ARN that you made note of earlier, along with the CommonName, Organization, VendorId, ProductId, and ValidityInYears for the PAI, and then choose Next.

    Multi-party approval: Approve the change request for the PAI

    Each of the approvers should now follow the steps in this section for approval for the PAI. Jane Doe will need to use IAM role MatterCA-Admin-1, and Paulo Santos will need to use IAM role MatterCA-Admin-2.

    To approve the change request for the PAI

    1. Open the Systems Manager console and do the following:
      1. In the navigation pane, choose Change Manager.
      2. Choose the Approvals tab, select the CreatePAI change request, and choose Approve.

      After both approvers (Jane Doe and Paulo Santos) approve the change request, the change request will run, and the PAA will be created inside AWS Private CA.

    2. Check that the status of the change request shows Success, as shown in Figure 19.
      Figure 19: The change requests for the PAA and PAI have run successfully

      Figure 19: The change requests for the PAA and PAI have run successfully

    3. In the AWS Private CA console, verify that the PAA and PAI have been created successfully, as shown in Figure 20.
      Figure 20: PAA and PAI in AWS Private CA

      Figure 20: PAA and PAI in AWS Private CA

    After successfully completing these steps, you have created the certificate authority PAI by using AWS Private CA with multi-party approval. You can now issue DAC certificates by using this PAI. Next, we will show how to validate the logs to confirm multi-party approval.

    Demonstrate compliance with multi-party approval requirements of the Matter CP by using the change manager timeline

    To keep audit records that show that multi-party approval was used to create the PAA and PAI to issue DACs, you can use the Change Manager timeline.

    To retrieve the change manager timeline report

    1. Open the Systems Manager console.
    2. In the left navigation pane, choose Change Manager.
    3. Choose Requests, and then select either the CreatePAA_ChangeRequest or the CreatePAI_ChangeRequest change request.
    4. Select the Timeline tab. Figure 21 shows an example of a timeline with complete runbook steps for PAA creation. It also shows the two approvers, Jane Doe and Paulo Santos, approving the change request. You can use this information to demonstrate multi-party approval.
      Figure 21: Audit trail for approval and creation of the PAA

      Figure 21: Audit trail for approval and creation of the PAA

      Likewise, Figure 22 shows an example of a timeline with complete runbook steps for creating the PAI by using multi-party approval.

      Figure 22: Audit trail for approval and creation of the PAI

      Figure 22: Audit trail for approval and creation of the PAI

    Conclusion

    In this post, you learned how to use AWS Private CA to facilitate the creation of Matter CAs in compliance with the Matter PKI CP. By using AWS Systems Manager, you can effectively fulfill the technical security control outlined in the Matter PKI CP for implementing multi-party approval for the creation of PAA and PAI certificates.

    If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below. If you have questions about this post, start a new thread on the AWS Private Certificate Authority re:Post or contact AWS Support.

    Want more AWS Security news? Follow us on Twitter.

    Author photo: Ram Ramani

    Ram Ramani

    Ram is a Principal Security Solutions Architect at AWS with deep expertise in data protection and privacy. Ram is currently helping customers accelerate their Matter compliance needs using AWS services.

    Pravin Nair

    Pravin Nair

    Pravin is a seasoned Senior Security Solution Architect focused on data protection and privacy. Specializing in encryption, infrastructure security, and privacy, he assists customers in developing secure and scalable solutions that align with their business requirements. Pravin’s expertise helps to provide optimal data protection while addressing evolving security challenges.

    Lukas Rash

    Lukas Rash

    Lukas is a Software Engineer in the AWS Cryptography organization. He is passionate about building robust cloud services to help customers improve the security of their systems. He specializes in building software to help customers implement their public key infrastructures.

Top 2022 AWS data protection service and cryptography tool launches

Post Syndicated from Marta Taggart original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/top-2022-aws-data-protection-service-and-cryptography-tool-launches/

Given the pace of Amazon Web Services (AWS) innovation, it can be challenging to stay up to date on the latest AWS service and feature launches. AWS provides services and tools to help you protect your data, accounts, and workloads from unauthorized access. AWS data protection services provide encryption capabilities, key management, and sensitive data discovery. Last year, we saw growth and evolution in AWS data protection services as we continue to give customers features and controls to help meet their needs. Protecting data in the AWS Cloud is a top priority because we know you trust us to help protect your most critical and sensitive asset: your data. This post will highlight some of the key AWS data protection launches in the last year that security professionals should be aware of.

AWS Key Management Service
Create and control keys to encrypt or digitally sign your data

In April, AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) launched hash-based message authentication code (HMAC) APIs. This feature introduced the ability to create AWS KMS keys that can be used to generate and verify HMACs. HMACs are a powerful cryptographic building block that incorporate symmetric key material within a hash function to create a unique keyed message authentication code. HMACs provide a fast way to tokenize or sign data such as web API requests, credit card numbers, bank routing information, or personally identifiable information (PII). This technology is used to verify the integrity and authenticity of data and communications. HMACs are often a higher performing alternative to asymmetric cryptographic methods like RSA or elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) and should be used when both message senders and recipients can use AWS KMS.

At AWS re:Invent in November, AWS KMS introduced the External Key Store (XKS), a new feature for customers who want to protect their data with encryption keys that are stored in an external key management system under their control. This capability brings new flexibility for customers to encrypt or decrypt data with cryptographic keys, independent authorization, and audit in an external key management system outside of AWS. XKS can help you address your compliance needs where encryption keys for regulated workloads must be outside AWS and solely under your control. To provide customers with a broad range of external key manager options, AWS KMS developed the XKS specification with feedback from leading key management and hardware security module (HSM) manufacturers as well as service providers that can help customers deploy and integrate XKS into their AWS projects.

AWS Nitro System
A combination of dedicated hardware and a lightweight hypervisor enabling faster innovation and enhanced security

In November, we published The Security Design of the AWS Nitro System whitepaper. The AWS Nitro System is a combination of purpose-built server designs, data processors, system management components, and specialized firmware that serves as the underlying virtualization technology that powers all Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances launched since early 2018. This new whitepaper provides you with a detailed design document that covers the inner workings of the AWS Nitro System and how it is used to help secure your most critical workloads. The whitepaper discusses the security properties of the Nitro System, provides a deeper look into how it is designed to eliminate the possibility of AWS operator access to a customer’s EC2 instances, and describes its passive communications design and its change management process. Finally, the paper surveys important aspects of the overall system design of Amazon EC2 that provide mitigations against potential side-channel vulnerabilities that can exist in generic compute environments.

AWS Secrets Manager
Centrally manage the lifecycle of secrets

In February, AWS Secrets Manager added the ability to schedule secret rotations within specific time windows. Previously, Secrets Manager supported automated rotation of secrets within the last 24 hours of a specified rotation interval. This new feature added the ability to limit a given secret rotation to specific hours on specific days of a rotation interval. This helps you avoid having to choose between the convenience of managed rotations and the operational safety of application maintenance windows. In November, Secrets Manager also added the capability to rotate secrets as often as every four hours, while providing the same managed rotation experience.

In May, Secrets Manager started publishing secrets usage metrics to Amazon CloudWatch. With this feature, you have a streamlined way to view how many secrets you are using in Secrets Manager over time. You can also set alarms for an unexpected increase or decrease in number of secrets.

At the end of December, Secrets Manager added support for managed credential rotation for service-linked secrets. This feature helps eliminate the need for you to manage rotation Lambda functions and enables you to set up rotation without additional configuration. Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) has integrated with this feature to streamline how you manage your master user password for your RDS database instances. Using this feature can improve your database’s security by preventing the RDS master user password from being visible during the database creation workflow. Amazon RDS fully manages the master user password’s lifecycle and stores it in Secrets Manager whenever your RDS database instances are created, modified, or restored. To learn more about how to use this feature, see Improve security of Amazon RDS master database credentials using AWS Secrets Manager.

AWS Private Certificate Authority
Create private certificates to identify resources and protect data

In September, AWS Private Certificate Authority (AWS Private CA) launched as a standalone service. AWS Private CA was previously a feature of AWS Certificate Manager (ACM). One goal of this launch was to help customers differentiate between ACM and AWS Private CA. ACM and AWS Private CA have distinct roles in the process of creating and managing the digital certificates used to identify resources and secure network communications over the internet, in the cloud, and on private networks. This launch coincided with the launch of an updated console for AWS Private CA, which includes accessibility improvements to enhance screen reader support and additional tab key navigation for people with motor impairment.

In October, AWS Private CA introduced a short-lived certificate mode, a lower-cost mode of AWS Private CA that is designed for issuing short-lived certificates. With this new mode, public key infrastructure (PKI) administrators, builders, and developers can save money when issuing certificates where a validity period of 7 days or fewer is desired. To learn more about how to use this feature, see How to use AWS Private Certificate Authority short-lived certificate mode.

Additionally, AWS Private CA supported the launches of certificate-based authentication with Amazon AppStream 2.0 and Amazon WorkSpaces to remove the logon prompt for the Active Directory domain password. AppStream 2.0 and WorkSpaces certificate-based authentication integrates with AWS Private CA to automatically issue short-lived certificates when users sign in to their sessions. When you configure your private CA as a third-party root CA in Active Directory or as a subordinate to your Active Directory Certificate Services enterprise CA, AppStream 2.0 or WorkSpaces with AWS Private CA can enable rapid deployment of end-user certificates to seamlessly authenticate users. To learn more about how to use this feature, see How to use AWS Private Certificate Authority short-lived certificate mode.

AWS Certificate Manager
Provision and manage SSL/TLS certificates with AWS services and connected resources

In early November, ACM launched the ability to request and use Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) P-256 and P-384 TLS certificates to help secure your network traffic. You can use ACM to request ECDSA certificates and associate the certificates with AWS services like Application Load Balancer or Amazon CloudFront. Previously, you could only request certificates with an RSA 2048 key algorithm from ACM. Now, AWS customers who need to use TLS certificates with at least 120-bit security strength can use these ECDSA certificates to help meet their compliance needs. The ECDSA certificates have a higher security strength—128 bits for P-256 certificates and 192 bits for P-384 certificates—when compared to 112-bit RSA 2048 certificates that you can also issue from ACM. The smaller file footprint of ECDSA certificates makes them ideal for use cases with limited processing capacity, such as small Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Amazon Macie
Discover and protect your sensitive data at scale

Amazon Macie introduced two major features at AWS re:Invent. The first is a new capability that allows for one-click, temporary retrieval of up to 10 samples of sensitive data found in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). With this new capability, you can more readily view and understand which contents of an S3 object were identified as sensitive, so you can review, validate, and quickly take action as needed without having to review every object that a Macie job returned. Sensitive data samples captured with this new capability are encrypted by using customer-managed AWS KMS keys and are temporarily viewable within the Amazon Macie console after retrieval.

Additionally, Amazon Macie introduced automated sensitive data discovery, a new feature that provides continual, cost-efficient, organization-wide visibility into where sensitive data resides across your Amazon S3 estate. With this capability, Macie automatically samples and analyzes objects across your S3 buckets, inspecting them for sensitive data such as personally identifiable information (PII) and financial data; builds an interactive data map of where your sensitive data in S3 resides across accounts; and provides a sensitivity score for each bucket. Macie uses multiple automated techniques, including resource clustering by attributes such as bucket name, file types, and prefixes, to minimize the data scanning needed to uncover sensitive data in your S3 buckets. This helps you continuously identify and remediate data security risks without manual configuration and lowers the cost to monitor for and respond to data security risks.

Support for new open source encryption libraries

In February, we announced the availability of s2n-quic, an open source Rust implementation of the QUIC protocol, in our AWS encryption open source libraries. QUIC is a transport layer network protocol used by many web services to provide lower latencies than classic TCP. AWS has long supported open source encryption libraries for network protocols; in 2015 we introduced s2n-tls as a library for implementing TLS over HTTP. The name s2n is short for signal to noise and is a nod to the act of encryption—disguising meaningful signals, like your critical data, as seemingly random noise. Similar to s2n-tls, s2n-quic is designed to be small and fast, with simplicity as a priority. It is written in Rust, so it has some of the benefits of that programming language, such as performance, threads, and memory safety.

Cryptographic computing for AWS Clean Rooms (preview)

At re:Invent, we also announced AWS Clean Rooms, currently in preview, which includes a cryptographic computing feature that allows you to run a subset of queries on encrypted data. Clean rooms help customers and their partners to match, analyze, and collaborate on their combined datasets—without sharing or revealing underlying data. If you have data handling policies that require encryption of sensitive data, you can pre-encrypt your data by using a common collaboration-specific encryption key so that data is encrypted even when queries are run. With cryptographic computing, data that is used in collaborative computations remains encrypted at rest, in transit, and in use (while being processed).

If you’re looking for more opportunities to learn about AWS security services, read our AWS re:Invent 2022 Security recap post or watch the Security, Identity, and Compliance playlist.

Looking ahead in 2023

With AWS, you control your data by using powerful AWS services and tools to determine where your data is stored, how it is secured, and who has access to it. In 2023, we will further the AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge, our commitment to offering AWS customers the most advanced set of sovereignty controls and features available in the cloud.

You can join us at our security learning conference, AWS re:Inforce 2023, in Anaheim, CA, June 13–14, for the latest advancements in AWS security, compliance, identity, and privacy solutions.

Stay updated on launches by subscribing to the AWS What’s New RSS feed and reading the AWS Security Blog.

 
If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below. If you have questions about this post, contact AWS Support.

Want more AWS Security news? Follow us on Twitter.

Author

Marta Taggart

Marta is a Seattle-native and Senior Product Marketing Manager in AWS Security Product Marketing, where she focuses on data protection services. Outside of work you’ll find her trying to convince Jack, her rescue dog, not to chase squirrels and crows (with limited success).