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How to issue use-case bound certificates with AWS Private CA

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This article provides a guide on using AWS Private Certificate Authority (AWS Private CA) to issue X.509 certificates tailored for specific use cases by defining the intended purpose within the certificate Key Usage and Extended Key Usage extensions.

Specifically, the article covers:

  • Background on AWS Private CA, Key Usage, and Extended Key Usage extensions
  • Certificate templates and use cases supported by AWS Private CA
  • How to use blank certificate templates with API Passthrough and CSR Passthrough to define custom Key Usage and Extended Key Usage values
  • Step-by-step examples of issuing certificates bound for email protection and smart card authentication use cases using the AWS CLI
  • How to retrieve and decode the issued certificates to verify the defined extensions


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