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layout	page_title	sidebar_current	description
docs	PKI Secret Backend	docs-secrets-pki	The PKI secret backend for Vault generates TLS certificates.

PKI Secret Backend

Name: pki

The PKI secret backend for Vault generates X.509 certificates dynamically based on configured roles. This means services can get certificates needed for both client and server authentication without going through the usual manual process of generating a private key and CSR, submitting to a CA, and waiting for a verification and signing process to complete. Vault's built-in authentication and authorization mechanisms provide the verification functionality.

By keeping TTLs relatively short, revocations are less likely to be needed, keeping CRLs short and helping the backend scale to large workloads. This in turn allows each instance of a running application to have a unique certificate, eliminating sharing and the accompanying pain of revocation and rollover.

In addition, by allowing revocation to mostly be forgone, this backend allows for ephemeral certificates; certificates can be fetched and stored in memory upon application startup and discarded upon shutdown, without ever being written to disk.

This page will show a quick start for this backend. For detailed documentation on every path, use vault path-help after mounting the backend.

Considerations

To successfully deploy this backend, there are a number of important considerations to be aware of, as well as some preparatory steps that should be undertaken. You should read all of these before using this backend or generating the CA to use with this backend.

Be Careful with Root CAs

Vault storage is secure, but not as secure as a piece of paper in a bank vault. It is, after all, networked software. If your root CA is hosted outside of Vault, don't put it in Vault as well; instead, issue a shorter-lived intermediate CA certificate and put this into Vault. This aligns with industry best practices.

Since 0.4, the backend supports generating self-signed root CAs and creating and signing CSRs for intermediate CAs. In each instance, for security reasons, the private key can only be exported at generation time, and the ability to do so is part of the command path (so it can be put into ACL policies).

If you plan on using intermediate CAs with Vault, it is suggested that you let Vault create CSRs and do not export the private key, then sign those with your root CA (which may be a second mount of the pki backend).

One CA Certificate, One Backend

In order to vastly simplify both the configuration and codebase of the PKI backend, only one CA certificate is allowed per backend. If you want to issue certificates from multiple CAs, mount the PKI backend at multiple mount points with separate CA certificates in each.

This also provides a convenient method of switching to a new CA certificate while keeping CRLs valid from the old CA certificate; simply mount a new backend and issue from there.

A common pattern is to have one mount act as your root CA, and which is only used for signing intermediate CA CSRs mounted at other locations.

Keep certificate lifetimes short, for CRL's sake

This backend aligns with Vault's philosophy of short-lived secrets. As such it is not expected that CRLs will grow large; the only place a private key is ever returned is to the requesting client (this backend does not store generated private keys, except for CA certificates). In most cases, if the key is lost, the certificate can simply be ignored, as it will expire shortly.

If a certificate must truly be revoked, the normal Vault revocation function can be used; alternately a root token can be used to revoke the certificate using the certificate's serial number. Any revocation action will cause the CRL to be regenerated. When the CRL is regenerated, any expired certificates are removed from the CRL (and any revoked, expired certificate are removed from backend storage).

This backend does not support multiple CRL endpoints with sliding date windows; often such mechanisms will have the transition point a few days apart, but this gets into the expected realm of the actual certificate validity periods issued from this backend. A good rule of thumb for this backend would be to simply not issue certificates with a validity period greater than your maximum comfortable CRL lifetime. Alternately, you can control CRL caching behavior on the client to ensure that checks happen more often.

Often multiple endpoints are used in case a single CRL endpoint is down so that clients don't have to figure out what to do with a lack of response. Run Vault in HA mode, and the CRL endpoint should be available even if a particular node is down.

You must configure issuing/CRL/OCSP information in advance

This backend serves CRLs from a predictable location, but it is not possible for the backend to know where it is running. Therefore, you must configure desired URLs for the issuing certificate, CRL distribution points, and OCSP servers manually using the config/urls endpoint. It is supported to have more than one of each of these by passing in the multiple URLs as a comma-separated string parameter.

Safe Minimums

Since its inception, this backend has enforced SHA256 for signature hashes rather than SHA1. As of 0.5.1, a minimum of 2048 bits for RSA keys is also enforced. Software that can handle SHA256 signatures should also be able to handle 2048-bit keys, and 1024-bit keys are considered unsafe and are disallowed in the Internet PKI.

Token Lifetimes and Revocation

When a token expires, it revokes all leases associated with it. This means that long-lived CA certs need correspondingly long-lived tokens, something that is easy to forget. Starting with 0.6, root and intermediate CA certs no longer have associated leases, to prevent unintended revocation when not using a token with a long enough lifetime. To revoke these certificates, use the pki/revoke endpoint.

Quick Start

Mount the backend

The first step to using the PKI backend is to mount it. Unlike the generic backend, the pki backend is not mounted by default.

$ vault mount pki
Successfully mounted 'pki' at 'pki'!

Configure a CA certificate

Next, Vault must be configured with a CA certificate and associated private key. We'll take advantage of the backend's self-signed root generation support, but Vault also supports generating an intermediate CA (with a CSR for signing) or setting a PEM-encoded certificate and private key bundle directly into the backend.

Generally you'll want a root certificate to only be used to sign CA intermediate certificates, but for this example we'll proceed as if you will issue certificates directly from the root. As it's a root, we'll want to set a long maximum life time for the certificate; since it honors the maximum mount TTL, first we adjust that:

$ vault mount-tune -max-lease-ttl=87600h pki
Successfully tuned mount 'pki'!

That sets the maximum TTL for secrets issued from the mount to 10 years. (Note that roles can further restrict the maximum TTL.)

Now, we generate our root certificate:

$ vault write pki/root/generate/internal common_name=myvault.com ttl=87600h
Key             Value
certificate     -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIDvTCCAqWgAwIBAgIUAsza+fvOw+Xh9ifYQ0gNN0ruuWcwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEL
BQAwFjEUMBIGA1UEAxMLbXl2YXVsdC5jb20wHhcNMTUxMTE5MTYwNDU5WhcNMjUx
MTE2MTYwNDU5WjAWMRQwEgYDVQQDEwtteXZhdWx0LmNvbTCCASIwDQYJKoZIhvcN
AQEBBQADggEPADCCAQoCggEBAMUhH4OLf/sa6GuJONGC/CWLY7nDbfH8jAaCKgqV
eJ81KrmcgP8WPhoFsYHFQEQXQZcrJagwYfm19jYn3CaqrYPbciv9bcWi+ECxZV3x
Hs/YdCFk7KgDGCci37w+cy6fSB943FKJqqVbvPv0odmq6LvgGGgneznvuvkIrOWG
qVDrDdvbEZ01XAyzUQJaaiJXExN+6xm1HcBoypCP8ZjjnXHcFQvw2QBItLRU7iUd
ESFgbrkrSPW3HA6KF0ov2qFMoHTiQ6aM4KaHPmXcFPicugYR9owZfZ4lwWJCqT7j
EkhokaMgHnvyRScuiRZhQm8ppHZoYsqrc3glfEuxGHkS+0cCAwEAAaOCAQEwgf4w
DgYDVR0PAQH/BAQDAgGuMBMGA1UdJQQMMAoGCCsGAQUFBwMJMA8GA1UdEwEB/wQF
MAMBAf8wHQYDVR0OBBYEFLvAbt0eUUOoo7hjKiQM2bRqDKrZMB8GA1UdIwQYMBaA
FLvAbt0eUUOoo7hjKiQM2bRqDKrZMDsGCCsGAQUFBwEBBC8wLTArBggrBgEFBQcw
AoYfaHR0cDovLzEyNy4wLjAuMTo4MjAwL3YxL3BraS9jYTAWBgNVHREEDzANggtt
eXZhdWx0LmNvbTAxBgNVHR8EKjAoMCagJKAihiBodHRwOi8vMTI3LjAuMC4xOjgy
MDAvdjEvcGtpL2NybDANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQsFAAOCAQEAVSgIRl6XJs95D7iXGzeQ
Ab8OIei779k0pD7xxS/+knY3TM6733zL/LXs4BEL3wfcQWoDrMtCW0Ook455sAOE
PSnTaZYQSH/F74VawWhSee4ZyiWq+sTUI4IzqYG3IS36mCyb0t6RxEb3aoQ87WHs
BHIB6uWbj6WoGHYM8ESxY89aY9jnX3xSs1HuluVW1uPrpIoa/eudpyV40Y1+9RNM
6fCX5LHGM7vKYxqvudYe+7G1MdKVBQg17h6XuieiUswVt2/HvDlNr+9DHrUla9Ve
Ig43v+grirlG7DrAr6Aiu/MVWKJP6CvNwG/XzrGaqd6KqSsE+8oIGR9tCTuPxI6v
SQ==
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
expiration      1.763309099e+09
issuing_ca      -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----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-----END CERTIFICATE-----
serial_number   02:cc:da:f9:fb:ce:c3:e5:e1:f6:27:d8:43:48:0d:37:4a:ee:b9:67

The returned certificate is purely informational; it and its private key are safely stored in the backend mount.

Set URL configuration

Generated certificates can have the CRL location and the location of the issuing certificate encoded. These values must be set manually, but can be changed at any time.

$ vault write pki/config/urls issuing_certificates="http://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/pki/ca" crl_distribution_points="http://127.0.0.1:8200/v1/pki/crl"
Success! Data written to: pki/ca/urls

Configure a role

The next step is to configure a role. A role is a logical name that maps to a policy used to generate those credentials. For example, let's create an "example-dot-com" role:

$ vault write pki/roles/example-dot-com \
    allowed_domains="example.com" \
    allow_subdomains="true" max_ttl="72h"
Success! Data written to: pki/roles/example-dot-com

Generate credentials

By writing to the roles/example-dot-com path we are defining the example-dot-com role. To generate a new set of credentials, we simply write to the issue endpoint with that role name: Vault is now configured to create and manage certificates!

$ vault write pki/issue/example-dot-com \
    common_name=blah.example.com
Key             	Value
---             	-----
lease_id        	pki/issue/example-dot-com/6d8ab3e2-ce31-8821-81e4-740a498af51d
lease_duration  	259199
lease_renewable 	false
certificate     	-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIDbDCCAlSgAwIBAgIUPiAyxq+nIE6xlWf7hrzLkPQxtvMwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEL
BQAwMzExMC8GA1UEAxMoVmF1bHQgVGVzdGluZyBJbnRlcm1lZGlhdGUgU3ViIEF1
dGhvcml0eTAeFw0xNjA5MjcwMDA5MTNaFw0xNjA5MjcwMTA5NDNaMBsxGTAXBgNV
BAMTEGJsYWguZXhhbXBsZS5jb20wggEiMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4IBDwAwggEK
AoIBAQDJAYB04IVdmSC/TimaA6BbXlvgBTZHL5wBUTmO4iHhenL0eDEXVe2Fd7Yq
75LiBJmcC96hKbqh5rwS8KwN9ElZI52/mSMC+IvoNlYHAf7shwfsjrVx3q7/bTFg
lz6wECn1ugysxynmMvgQD/pliRkxTQ7RMh4Qlh75YG3R9BHy9ZddklZp0aNaitts
0uufHnN1UER/wxBCZdWTUu34KDL9I6yE7Br0slKKHPdEsGlFcMkbZhvjslZ7DGvO
974S0qtOdKiawJZbpNPg0foGZ3AxesDUlkHmmgzUNes/sjknDYTHEfeXM6Uap0j6
XvyhCxqdeahb/Vtibg0z9I0IusJbAgMBAAGjgY8wgYwwDgYDVR0PAQH/BAQDAgOo
MB0GA1UdJQQWMBQGCCsGAQUFBwMBBggrBgEFBQcDAjAdBgNVHQ4EFgQU/5oy0rL7
TT0wX7KZK7qcXqgayNwwHwYDVR0jBBgwFoAUgM37P8oXmA972ztLfw+b1eIY5now
GwYDVR0RBBQwEoIQYmxhaC5leGFtcGxlLmNvbTANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQsFAAOCAQEA
CT2vI6/taeLTw6ZulUhLXEXYXWZu1gF8n2COjZzbZXmHxQAoZ3GtnSNwacPHAyIj
f3cA9Moo552y39LUtWk+wgFtQokWGK7LXglLaveNUBowOHq/xk0waiIinJcgTG53
Z/qnbJnTjAOG7JwVJplWUIiS1avCksrHt7heE2EGRGJALqyLZ119+PW6ogtCLUv1
X8RCTw/UkIF/LT+sLF0bXWy4Hn38Gjwj1MVv1l76cEGOVSHyrYkN+6AMnAP58L5+
IWE9tN3oac4x7jhbuNpfxazIJ8Q6l/Up5U5Evfbh6N1DI0/gFCP20fMBkHwkuLfZ
2ekZoSeCgFRDlHGkr7Vv9w==
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
issuing_ca      	-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----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aAjAgEjtkB1rQxW5DxoTArZ0asiIdmIcIGmsVxfDQIjFlRxAkafMs74v+5U5gbBX
wsOledU0fLl8KLq8W3OXqJwhGLK65fscrP0/omPAcFgzXf+L4VUADM4XhW6Xyg==
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
ca_chain        	[-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIDijCCAnKgAwIBAgIUB28DoGwgGFKL7fbOu9S4FalHLn0wDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEL
BQAwLzEtMCsGA1UEAxMkVmF1bHQgVGVzdGluZyBJbnRlcm1lZGlhdGUgQXV0aG9y
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wsOledU0fLl8KLq8W3OXqJwhGLK65fscrP0/omPAcFgzXf+L4VUADM4XhW6Xyg==
-----END CERTIFICATE----- -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIDejCCAmKgAwIBAgIUDXJyQ1uJPF5ridDOCvGtVF1F8HUwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEL
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knj9MxY9j42z2BKkhHayyuOa0BQm0TTu4S2fhajl
-----END CERTIFICATE-----]
private_key     	-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
MIIEpgIBAAKCAQEAyQGAdOCFXZkgv04pmgOgW15b4AU2Ry+cAVE5juIh4Xpy9Hgx
F1XthXe2Ku+S4gSZnAveoSm6oea8EvCsDfRJWSOdv5kjAviL6DZWBwH+7IcH7I61
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-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
private_key_type	rsa
serial_number   	3e:20:32:c6:af:a7:20:4e:b1:95:67:fb:86:bc:cb:90:f4:31:b6:f3

Vault has now generated a new set of credentials using the example-dot-com role configuration. Here we see the dynamically generated private key and certificate. The issuing CA certificate and CA trust chain is returned as well.

Using ACLs, it is possible to restrict using the pki backend such that trusted operators can manage the role definitions, and both users and applications are restricted in the credentials they are allowed to read.

If you get stuck at any time, simply run vault path-help pki or with a subpath for interactive help output.

API

The PKI secret backend has a full HTTP API. Please see the PKI secret backend API for more details.

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