Welcome to certbot-dns-route53’s documentation!

The dns_route53 plugin automates the process of completing a dns-01 challenge (DNS01) by creating, and subsequently removing, TXT records using the Amazon Web Services Route 53 API.

Note

The plugin is not installed by default. It can be installed by heading to certbot.eff.org, choosing your system and selecting the Wildcard tab.

Credentials

Use of this plugin requires a configuration file containing Amazon Web Sevices API credentials for an account with the following permissions:

  • route53:ListHostedZones

  • route53:GetChange

  • route53:ChangeResourceRecordSets

These permissions can be captured in an AWS policy like the one below. Amazon provides information about managing access and information about the required permissions

Example AWS policy file:
{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Id": "certbot-dns-route53 sample policy",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "route53:ListHostedZones",
                "route53:GetChange"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "*"
            ]
        },
        {
            "Effect" : "Allow",
            "Action" : [
                "route53:ChangeResourceRecordSets"
            ],
            "Resource" : [
                "arn:aws:route53:::hostedzone/YOURHOSTEDZONEID"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

The access keys for an account with these permissions must be supplied in one of the following ways, which are discussed in more detail in the Boto3 library’s documentation about configuring credentials.

  • Using the AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY environment variables.

  • Using a credentials configuration file at the default location, ~/.aws/config.

  • Using a credentials configuration file at a path supplied using the AWS_CONFIG_FILE environment variable.

Example credentials config file:
[default]
aws_access_key_id=AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE
aws_secret_access_key=wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY

Caution

You should protect these API credentials as you would a password. Users who can read this file can use these credentials to issue some types of API calls on your behalf, limited by the permissions assigned to the account. Users who can cause Certbot to run using these credentials can complete a dns-01 challenge to acquire new certificates or revoke existing certificates for domains these credentials are authorized to manage.

Examples

To acquire a certificate for example.com
certbot certonly \
  --dns-route53 \
  -d example.com
To acquire a single certificate for both example.com and www.example.com
certbot certonly \
  --dns-route53 \
  -d example.com \
  -d www.example.com

Indices and tables