🛡️ A private certificate authority (X.509 & SSH) & ACME server for secure automated certificate management, so you can use TLS everywhere & SSO for SSH.
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acme Update AllowWildcardNames configuration name 2022-04-29 15:08:19 +02:00
api Change Subject Common Name verification 2022-04-28 14:49:23 +02:00
authority Change context retrievers to MustTFromContext 2022-05-05 11:05:57 +02:00
autocert Use REAMDE.md suggested in code review. 2019-06-18 17:11:29 -07:00
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cmd Merge branch 'master' into feat/vault 2022-04-11 14:57:45 -07:00
commands Linted. 2022-04-05 10:59:35 -07:00
db Store certificate and provisioner in one transaction. 2022-04-12 18:42:27 -07:00
debian [action] debian rules syntax 2021-04-13 16:53:30 -07:00
docker include support for GCP and AWS KMS by default 2022-04-25 14:25:31 +02:00
docs Merge branch 'master' into hs/acme-eab 2021-12-09 13:58:40 +01:00
errs api/render, api/log: initial implementation of the packages (#860) 2022-03-30 11:22:22 +03:00
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kms Fix typo. 2021-12-17 10:55:23 -08:00
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make [action] sign and push sigs for multi-arch docker containers w/ cosign 2021-09-01 12:43:59 -07:00
monitoring ca-component -> certificates 2018-10-31 21:36:01 -07:00
pki Create the db directory on step ca init 2022-01-12 12:35:37 -08:00
policy Update AllowWildcardNames configuration name 2022-04-29 15:08:19 +02:00
scep scep: remove Interface and the dependency to pkg/errors (#872) 2022-03-24 17:08:23 +02:00
scripts We now have an armv5 step-ca build; remove guard clause from RA install script 2022-04-20 09:48:06 -07:00
server Use Golang's default keep-alive. 2021-10-15 14:12:43 -07:00
systemd Fixes #757 2021-11-23 18:12:31 -08:00
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CHANGELOG.md Fix step -> step-ca 2022-04-19 22:50:28 +02:00
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go.mod Change context retrievers to MustTFromContext 2022-05-05 11:05:57 +02:00
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README.md add Postgres to available databases in README 2022-04-12 15:21:18 -07:00

Step Certificates

step-ca is an online certificate authority for secure, automated certificate management. It's the server counterpart to the step CLI tool.

You can use it to:

  • Issue X.509 certificates for your internal infrastructure:
    • HTTPS certificates that work in browsers (RFC5280 and CA/Browser Forum compliance)
    • TLS certificates for VMs, containers, APIs, mobile clients, database connections, printers, wifi networks, toaster ovens...
    • Client certificates to enable mutual TLS (mTLS) in your infra. mTLS is an optional feature in TLS where both client and server authenticate each other. Why add the complexity of a VPN when you can safely use mTLS over the public internet?
  • Issue SSH certificates:
    • For people, in exchange for single sign-on ID tokens
    • For hosts, in exchange for cloud instance identity documents
  • Easily automate certificate management:

Whatever your use case, step-ca is easy to use and hard to misuse, thanks to safe, sane defaults.


Don't want to run your own CA? To get up and running quickly, or as an alternative to running your own step-ca server, consider creating a free hosted smallstep Certificate Manager authority.


Questions? Find us in Discussions or Join our Discord.

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Features

🦾 A fast, stable, flexible private CA

Setting up a public key infrastructure (PKI) is out of reach for many small teams. step-ca makes it easier.

⚙️ Many ways to automate

There are several ways to authorize a request with the CA and establish a chain of trust that suits your flow.

You can issue certificates in exchange for:

🏔 Your own private ACME server

ACME is the protocol used by Let's Encrypt to automate the issuance of HTTPS certificates. It's super easy to issue certificates to any ACMEv2 (RFC8555) client.

👩🏽‍💻 An online SSH Certificate Authority

  • Delegate SSH authentication to step-ca by using SSH certificates instead of public keys and authorized_keys files
  • For user certificates, connect SSH to your single sign-on provider, to improve security with short-lived certificates and MFA (or other security policies) via any OAuth OIDC provider.
  • For host certificates, improve security, eliminate TOFU warnings, and set up automated host certificate renewal.

🤓 A general purpose PKI tool, via step CLI integration

Installation

See our installation docs here.

Documentation

Documentation can be found in a handful of different places:

  1. On the web at https://smallstep.com/docs/step-ca.

  2. On the command line with step help ca xxx where xxx is the subcommand you are interested in. Ex: step help ca provisioner list.

  3. In your browser, by running step help --http=:8080 ca from the command line and visiting http://localhost:8080.

  4. The docs folder is being deprecated, but it still has some documentation and tutorials.

Feedback?