cert-portal/README.md

Certificate Portal

OIDC-authenticated web portal that issues a user certificate from Active Directory Certificate Services and delivers it as a signed Apple .mobileconfig.

This is Design B: the portal talks to the CA itself. There is no NDES and no SCEP. The device never contacts AD CS.

Sign in (OIDC) → LDAP objectSid → RSA key + CSR in memory
    → POST /certsrv/certfnsh.asp (NTLM) → PKCS#12 inside .mobileconfig
    → CMS-sign the profile → download over HTTPS

Tradeoff

The private key is generated on the server, packed into a PKCS#12, and sent to the device. It is kept in memory only for that request and is not written to disk. That is commonly accepted for user Wi-Fi certificates. Do not use this portal for keys that must never leave the device (SCEP / on-device generation is a different design).

Documentation

Doc	Contents
docs/architecture.md	Request flow, the two PKCS#12s, why phones never talk to the CA
docs/setup.md	OIDC, LDAP, certsrv, TLS, Docker / python -m cert_portal
docs/adcs.md	Web Enrollment, template flags, SID URI / strong mapping
docs/profile-signing.md	Signing identity, device trust, CMS format
docs/security.md	Key lifetime, logging, sessions, who can download
.env.example	Every setting, commented

After sign-in, operators and users can also open Help in the app (/help) without cloning this repo.

Quick start

1. Copy .env.example to .env and fill in OIDC, LDAP, certsrv, and the profile-signing PKCS#12 path.
2. Python 3.12+: pip install -e ".[dev]" then python -m cert_portal
3. Or: docker build -t cert-portal . and run with --env-file .env, publishing port 8000, mounting the signing P12.

Put a reverse proxy in front for TLS. Set PUBLIC_BASE_URL and OIDC_REDIRECT_URI to that HTTPS origin (/auth/callback).

What you need on the Windows side

• AD CS Web Enrollment (https://ca.example.com/certsrv) reachable from the Linux host
• A template the portal service account can Enroll, with subject and SAN supplied in the request
• A domain account for NTLM to certsrv (and a separate LDAP bind account, or the same one)
• A certificate (and private key) used only to sign .mobileconfig files, already trusted on devices

Details: docs/adcs.md and docs/profile-signing.md.

Development

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

Tests mock the CA. They do not need live AD CS, LDAP, or an IdP.