Description
To enable HTTPS connections to your website or application in AWS, you need an SSL/TLS server certificate. You can use ACM or IAM to store and deploy server certificates. Use IAM as a certificate manager only when you must support HTTPS connections in a region that is not supported by ACM. IAM securely encrypts your private keys and stores the encrypted version in IAM SSL certificate storage. IAM supports deploying server certificates in all regions, but you must obtain your certificate from an external provider for use with AWS. You cannot upload an ACM certificate to IAM. Additionally, you cannot manage your certificates from the IAM Console.
Rationale
Removing expired SSL/TLS certificates eliminates the risk that an invalid certificate will be deployed accidentally to a resource such as AWS Elastic Load Balancer (ELB), which can damage the credibility of the application/website behind the ELB. As a best practice, it is recommended to delete expired certificates.
Impact
Deleting the certificate could have implications for your application if you are using an expired server certificate with Elastic Load Balancing, CloudFront, etc. One has to make configurations at respective services to ensure there is no interruption in application functionality.
Audit
From Console
Getting the certificates expiration information via AWS Management Console is not currently supported. To request information about the SSL/TLS certificates stored in IAM via the AWS API use the Command Line Interface (CLI).
From Command Line
Run list-server-certificates command to list all the IAM-stored server certificates:
aws iam list-server-certificates
The command output should return an array that contains all the SSL/TLS certificates currently stored in IAM and their metadata (name, ID, expiration date, etc):
{
"ServerCertificateMetadataList": [
{
"ServerCertificateId": "EHDGFRW7EJFYTE88D",
"ServerCertificateName": "MyServerCertificate",
"Expiration": "2018-07-10T23:59:59Z",
"Path": "/",
"Arn": "arn:aws:iam::012345678910:server-certificate/MySSLCertificate",
"UploadDate": "2018-06-10T11:56:08Z"
}
]
}
Verify the ServerCertificateName and Expiration parameter value (expiration date) for each SSL/TLS certificate returned by the list-server-certificates command and determine if there are any expired server certificates currently stored in AWS IAM. If so, use the AWS API to remove them.
If this command returns:
{ "ServerCertificateMetadataList": [] }
This means that there are no expired certificates, It DOES NOT mean that no certificates exist.
Default Value
By default, expired certificates will not be deleted.