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Setup a Certification Authority Authorization (CAA) DNS record(s) to prevent https cert issue/misuse

March 18, 2019 by Simon

On February 22nd 2017 CAA’s that issue https certificates are required to check what CAA’s are allowed to issue HTTP’s certificates for a website. To limit who can create HTTP’s certificates for your site all you need to do is specify a number of DNS records.

DNSSEC

Before adding DNS CAA records ensure you have enabled DNSSEC for extra security, this is not needed to setup CAA records but it’s a good idea.

DNSSEC Explained

Read my post here on setting up DNSSEC with Cloudflare here.

Namecheap allows you do set DNSSEC with 1 click (making the above guide not required unless you use Cloudflare).

One Click Enable DNS SEC

Testing DNSSEC

First, test DNSSEC on your website here: https://dnssec-analyzer.verisignlabs.com/ (I already have DNSSEC enabled)

I use Namecheap for buying domains and HTTP’s certs (you can buy a new domain here). Namecheap allow you to easily enable DNSSEC and CAA DNS records.

Read Namecheap’s CAA guide here.

Scott Helme tagged a great write up on CAA here.

CAA is probably the best bang for buck you’re going to get! https://t.co/pvThaQ8qFl

— Scott Helme (@Scott_Helme) March 14, 2019

Testing CAA (on your website)

Go to https://dev.ssllabs.com/ssltest/ and scan your website

https://dev.ssllabs.com screenshot showing a domain input box

You will see if CAA is enabled after the https test is complete (scroll past the rating)

https://dev.ssllabs.com scan showing A+

In my case CAA records were not detected.

Adding DNS CAA records at Namecheap

I logged into Namecheap, clicked Manage domain and clicked the Advanced DNS tab

Screenshot showing Namecheap Advanced DNS screen.
I click Add New Record (DNS), then I selected CAA
Screenshot of add NDS CAA record at Namecheap

Here are records for my main domain (allowing Comodo/Sectigo HTTP’s certificates only)

Type, Host, Value, TTL

CAA Record @ 0 issue "comodoca.com" Automatic
CAA Record @ 0 issue "comodo.com" Automatic
CAA Record @ 0 issue "usertrust.com" Automatic
CAA Record @ 0 issue "trust-provider.com" Automatic
CAA Record @ 0 issue "sectigo.com" Automatic

Here is my record allowing a sub domain (allowing Lets Encrypt HTTP’s certificates only)

Type, Host, Value, TTL

CAA Record audit.fearby.com 0 issue "letsencrypt.org" Automatic

It is also possible to setup email alerts of CAA violations where CAA’s support it. I setup a [email protected] email alias.

Type, Host, Value, TTL

CAA Record audit.fearby.com 0 iodef "mailto:[email protected]" Automatic
CAA [email protected] 0 iodef "mailto:[email protected]" Automatic

Image of my final Namecheap DNS config.

Screenshot os Namecheap DNS entries (table below)

Test CAA Records

I visited https://dev.ssllabs.com/ssltest/ and performed a final scan.

CNS CAA Final scan now passes at dev.ssllabs.com

Pass 🙂

I do have real time remote server monitoring reporting on https presence and uptime, read the post here.

Nixstats graphs

Plug(s)

  • Buy a VM, get $25 credit (blog post)
  • Buy a Domain from Namecheap
  • Setup GSuite Email for your domain
  • Setup a WordPress CDN or Image Resizing
  • Setup Realtime Server Monitoring

Warning

I had an issue where I failed to update my DNS (and define a CAA record) for the sub domain used for Nixstat reporting. I was receiving this error.

Connection not private warning.

dev.ssllabs.com was reporting the cert expired?

dev.ssllabs.com ssl report

The awesome chat support (Vincent) over at Nixstats found out it was because I did not have CAA record for the sub domain allowing “letsencrypt.org” to generate certs.

Created CAA record for status.feabry.com (CAA 0 issue "letsencrypt.org"

If you manually renew a Lets Encrypt cert with the following command without a CAA record you will see an error

> certbot -q renew

Error Output

Attempting to renew cert (subdomain.fearby.com) from /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/
subdomain.fearby.com.conf produced an unexpected error: Failed authorization procedure.
subdomain.fearby.com (http-01): urn:acme:error:caa :: CAA record for
subdomain.fearby.com prevents issuance. Skipping.
All renewal attempts failed.

DNS additions and changes take a while to propagate so monitor Whats My DNS for change status

https://www.whatsmydns.net/#CAA/status.fearby.com

Thanks for reading.

For simplicity I have removed all sub domain CAA settings for records and only set global ones

Revision History

v1.2 Troubleshooting

v1.1 Plugs

v1.0 initial Post

Filed Under: Advice, Caa, DNS, DNSSEC, Domain, HTTPS Tagged With: (CAA), Authority, Authorization, cert, Certification, DNS, HTTPS, issue, prevent, record(s), Setup, to

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