cert-manager/cert-manager v1.16.0 on GitHub

cert-manager is the easiest way to automatically manage certificates in Kubernetes and OpenShift clusters.

The cert-manager 1.16 release includes: new Helm chart features, more Prometheus metrics, memory optimizations, and various improvements and bug fixes for the ACME issuer and Venafi Issuer.

📖 Read the complete 1.16 release notes at cert-manager.io.

⚠️ Known issues

Helm Chart: JSON schema prevents the chart being used as a sub-chart and on Rancher RKE.

❗ Breaking changes

Helm schema validation may reject your existing Helm values files if they contain typos or unrecognized fields.
Venafi Issuer may fail to renew certificates if the requested duration conflicts with the CA’s minimum or maximum policy settings in Venafi.
Venafi Issuer may fail to renew Certificates if the issuer has been configured for TPP with username-password authentication.

📖 Read the complete 1.16 release notes at cert-manager.io.

📜 Changes since v1.15.0

📖 Read the complete 1.16 release notes at cert-manager.io.

Feature

Add SecretRef support for Venafi TPP issuer CA Bundle (#7036, @sankalp-at-gh)
Add renewBeforePercentage alternative to renewBefore (#6987, @cbroglie)
Add a metrics server to the cainjector (#7194, @wallrj)
Add a metrics server to the webhook (#7182, @wallrj)
Add client certificate auth method for Vault issuer (#4330, @joshmue)
Add process and go runtime metrics for controller (#6966, @mindw)
Added app.kubernetes.io/managed-by: cert-manager label to the cert-manager-webhook-ca Secret (#7154, @jrcichra)
Allow the user to specify a Pod template when using GatewayAPI HTTP01 solver, this mirrors the behavior when using the Ingress HTTP01 solver. (#7211, @ThatsMrTalbot)
Create token request RBAC for the cert-manager ServiceAccount by default (#7213, @Jasper-Ben)
Feature: Append cert-manager user-agent string to all AWS API requests, including IMDS and STS requests. (#7295, @wallrj)
Feature: Log AWS SDK warnings and API requests at cert-manager debug level to help debug AWS Route53 problems in the field. (#7292, @wallrj)
Feature: The Route53 DNS solver of the ACME Issuer will now use regional STS endpoints computed from the region that is supplied in the Issuer spec or in the AWS_REGION environment variable.
Feature: The Route53 DNS solver of the ACME Issuer now uses the "ambient" region (AWS_REGION or AWS_DEFAULT_REGION) if issuer.spec.acme.solvers.dns01.route53.region is empty; regardless of the flags --issuer-ambient-credentials and --cluster-issuer-ambient-credentials. (#7299, @wallrj)
Helm: adds JSON schema validation for the Helm values. (#7069, @inteon)
If the --controllers flag only specifies disabled controllers, the default controllers are now enabled implicitly.
Added disableAutoApproval and approveSignerNames Helm chart options. (#7049, @inteon)
Make it easier to configure cert-manager using Helm by defaulting config.apiVersion and config.kind within the Helm chart. (#7126, @ThatsMrTalbot)
Now passes down specified duration to Venafi client instead of using the CA default only. (#7104, @Guitarkalle)
Reduce the memory usage of cainjector, by only caching the metadata of Secret resources.
Reduce the load on the K8S API server when cainjector starts up, by only listing the metadata of Secret resources. (#7161, @wallrj)
The Route53 DNS01 solver of the ACME Issuer can now detect the AWS region from the AWS_REGION and AWS_DEFAULT_REGION environment variables, which is set by the IAM for Service Accounts (IRSA) webhook and by the Pod Identity webhook.
The issuer.spec.acme.solvers.dns01.route53.region field is now optional.
The API documentation of the region field has been updated to explain when and how the region value is used. (#7287, @wallrj)
Venafi TPP issuer can now be used with a username & password combination with OAuth. Fixes #4653.
Breaking: cert-manager will no longer use the API Key authentication method which was deprecated in 20.2 and since removed in 24.1 of TPP. (#7084, @hawksight)
You can now configure the pod security context of HTTP-01 solver pods. (#5373, @aidy)
Helm: New value webhook.extraEnv, allows you to set custom environment variables in the webhook Pod.
Helm: New value cainjector.extraEnv, allows you to set custom environment variables in the cainjector Pod.
Helm: New value startupapicheck.extraEnv, allows you to set custom environment variables in the startupapicheck Pod. (#7319, @wallrj)

Bug or Regression

Adds support (behind a flag) to use a domain qualified finalizer. If the feature is enabled (which is not by default), it should prevent Kubernetes from reporting: metadata.finalizers: "finalizer.acme.cert-manager.io": prefer a domain-qualified finalizer name to avoid accidental conflicts with other finalizer writers (#7273, @jsoref)
BUGFIX Route53: explicitly set the aws-global STS region which is now required by the github.com/aws/aws-sdk-go-v2 library. (#7108, @inteon)
BUGFIX: fix issue that caused Vault issuer to not retry signing when an error was encountered. (#7105, @inteon)
BUGFIX: the dynamic certificate source used by the webhook TLS server failed to detect a root CA approaching expiration, due to a calculation error. This will cause the webhook TLS server to fail renewing its CA certificate. Please upgrade before the expiration of this CA certificate is reached. (#7230, @inteon)
Bugfix: Prevent aggressive Route53 retries caused by IRSA authentication failures by removing the Amazon Request ID from errors wrapped by the default credential cache. (#7291, @wallrj)
Bugfix: Prevent aggressive Route53 retries caused by STS authentication failures by removing the Amazon Request ID from STS errors. (#7259, @wallrj)
Bump grpc-go to fix GHSA-xr7q-jx4m-x55m (#7164, @SgtCoDFish)
Bump the go-retryablehttp dependency to fix CVE-2024-6104 (#7125, @SgtCoDFish)
Fix Azure DNS causing panics whenever authentication error happens (#7177, @eplightning)
Fix incorrect indentation of endpointAdditionalProperties in the PodMonitor template of the Helm chart (#7190, @wallrj)
Fixes ACME HTTP01 challenge behavior when using Gateway API to prevent unbounded creation of HTTPRoute resources (#7178, @miguelvr)
Handle errors arising from challenges missing from the ACME server (#7202, @bdols)
Helm BUGFIX: the cainjector ConfigMap was not mounted in the cainjector deployment. (#7052, @inteon)
Improve the startupapicheck: validate that the validating and mutating webhooks are doing their job. (#7057, @inteon)
The KeyUsages X.509 extension is no longer added when there are no key usages set (in accordance to RFC 5280 Section 4.2.1.3) (#7250, @inteon)
Update github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-go/sdk/azidentity to address CVE-2024-35255 (#7087, @dependabot[bot])

Other (Cleanup or Flake)

Old API versions were removed from the codebase.
Removed:
(acme.)cert-manager.io/v1alpha2
(acme.)cert-manager.io/v1alpha3
(acme.)cert-manager.io/v1beta1 (#7278, @inteon)
Upgrading to client-go v0.31.0 removes a lot of noisy reflector.go: unable to sync list result: internal error: cannot cast object DeletedFinalStateUnknown errors from logs. (#7237, @inteon)
Bump Go to v1.23.2 (#7324, @cert-manager-bot)