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Feature: ACME DNS-01 challenge delegation (CNAME alias) for least-privilege DNS tokens

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#103 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
45/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Quiet
Tech stack
python, shell
Domain
cloud, devops, security

Research direction

Start with entrypoint.sh and the existing dns_providers abstraction; trace the current ACME invocation, TXT handling, and CAA failure path. Review the proposed ACME_CHALLENGE_ALIAS flow and certbot manual auth/cleanup hooks. Done means alias-zone TXT delegation works without production-zone access, while the exact accounturi CAA is printed and verified or loudly reported absent.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Problem

dstack-ingress issues certs via ACME DNS-01, which requires a DNS provider API token that can edit the served domain's own zone (to write the _acme-challenge TXT, and — per entrypoint.sh — to set the A record and CAA).

In our deployment the served name (e.g. svc.example.com) lives under a shared production zone (example.com) that holds many unrelated production records. Handing the enclave a token for that zone is too broad:

  • Cloudflare API tokens scope only to zone level — there is no way to restrict a token to a single subdomain/record.
  • Managing the subdomain as its own Cloudflare zone requires an Enterprise plan.

So today we'd have to give the enclave a token that can edit our entire example.com zone, which we can't accept.

Proposed feature: DNS-01 challenge delegation (CNAME alias)

Let the operator delegate only the _acme-challenge to a separate zone they fully control, so the enclave's token never touches the production zone:

  1. Operator adds one static record in the production zone:
    _acme-challenge.svc.example.com CNAME <label>.<delegation-zone>
  2. dstack-ingress writes the challenge TXT into <delegation-zone> (its token scoped only to that zone). Let's Encrypt follows the CNAME during validation.

This is a standard least-privilege ACME pattern (acme.sh --challenge-alias, lego, cert-manager, and Cloudflare's own "Delegated DCV" all support it), and it fits dstack's zero-trust ethos.

Design sketch (opt-in, non-breaking)

  • New env ACME_CHALLENGE_ALIAS=<delegation-zone>; unset ⇒ current behavior, unchanged.
  • When set, run certbot with --manual --preferred-challenges=dns + auth/cleanup hooks that reuse the existing dns_providers abstraction to write the TXT under the alias zone instead of _acme-challenge.<domain>.

Important: CAA handling (needs an explicit decision)

entrypoint.sh currently auto-sets the accounturi CAA
(letsencrypt.org;validationmethods=dns-01;accounturi=$ACCOUNT_URI) on the served domain, using the same token. In delegation mode the token cannot touch the served domain's zone, so this auto-set won't work — and the current code treats a CAA-set failure as not critical, which would silently drop the accounturi lock (the forge-prevention against a non-TEE account issuing a cert for the domain).

To avoid silently weakening security, in delegation mode the feature should:

  • print the exact CAA record the operator must set statically in the served zone (including the account URI), and
  • verify the CAA is present / warn loudly if absent, instead of silently continuing.

This keeps the "only the TEE's ACME account can issue" guarantee explicit, rather than silently lost.

Dominant language
Python
Stars
27
Forks
26
Avg merge
1d 6h
Merged PRs (30d)
12

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