dns01cf is a Cloudflare Worker DNS proxy, limiting client access for ACME DNS-01 challenges down to individual TXT records. It also supports consolidation of DNS-01 challenges for non-Cloudflare domains through domain aliasing CNAMEs.

dns01cf supports most newer and legacy ACME clients by simulating various DNS provider APIs, enabling the reuse of existing client infrastructure while only requiring a change in the DNS challenge endpoint.

Deployment of dns01cf is swift, taking just a few minutes directly through the Cloudflare web UI. No installation of Git, Wrangler, or any additional tools is necessary.

✔️ Fast Installation: Deploying dns01cf requires only three main steps: 1) Create a new Cloudflare API token, 2) Create a new Cloudflare Worker and copy the contents of the worker.js file from this repository into that new Worker, 3) Set the required and any desired optional environment variables, and deploy!

✔️ Secure DNS: ACME clients can only modify TXT records strictly within the ACLs you define for each client.

✔️ Minimal Cloudflare Dependency: Only one domain needs to be behind Cloudflare, the rest can be anywhere. dns01cf is best used with domain aliasing.

✔️ Many ACME Clients Supported: If an ACME client does not yet support dns01cf, that's okay! It also supports challenges meant for acme-dns, too, and more are coming soon.

dns01cf allows you to perform ACME DNS-01 validation across as many domains and sub-domains as you want, provided at least one of your domains is behind Cloudflare. You do not have to move all of your domains behind Cloudflare to use them with dns01cf, nor will dns01cf need API or other access to any of them. We will use a validation method known as domain aliasing, where the _acme-challenge DNS-01 validation hostname is set as a CNAME that points to another location where the validation will actually occur.

Designate a domain that will act as the central ACME DNS-01 challenge domain. (We will use dns-domain.com in our examples.) If you prefer, you can also designate one or more sub-domains where all ACME DNS-01 challenges will be consolidated. (We will use acme-challenges.dns-domain.com in our examples.)

Next, setup CNAME DNS entries for all domains and sub-domains that will use dns01cf. For example, to validate foo.bar.example.com with dns01cf, you would add the following CNAME:

_acme-challenge.foo.bar.example.com  IN CNAME  _acme-challenge.foo.bar.example.com.acme-challenges.dns-domain.com

This looks complicated, so let's break it down:

• _acme-challenge - Typical DNS record used for ACME DNS-01 challenges
• foo.bar.example.com - The actual hostname to be validated
• IN CNAME - The DNS record type to point this to the next part
• _acme-challenge.foo.bar.example.com - This will be defined as the ACL in the dns01cf client token issued to the ACME client that will request a TLS certificate for foo.bar.example.com
• acme-challenges.dns-domain.com - This will be defined as the sub (subject) in the dns01cf client token that all of its ACLs will fall under

You only need to set this DNS CNAME once, then you can define your ACME client token ACLs and subject with granular control over exactly what DNS records each ACME client can modify in a central location.

Alternatively, if all of the domains that will use dns01cf are behind Cloudflare, then setup is straightforward. Simply ensure the Cloudflare API token that dns01cf will use can access all relevant zones.

When using the ACME protocol to obtain a free TLS certificate, currently the only challenge type available for wildcard certificates is DNS-01. However this method requires that all ACME clients requesting wildcard certificates be given access to perform DNS changes.

In their documentation for Challenge Types, Let's Encrypt even states the following risk for DNS-01:

Keeping API credentials on your web server is risky.

Nearly all DNS providers with APIs give effectively all-or-nothing API access to a whole zone (domain), if not all zones in the account. If an ACME client with DNS API credentials is compromised, all of the zones those API credentials have access to are compromised as well.

Therefore, dns01cf was created to enable a more secure means of completing ACME DNS-01 challenges without unnecessarily exposing entire DNS zones to all clients. Furthermore, to make dns01cf fast to install and easy to use, it has been kept limited a single file with pure JavaScript and no dependencies while requiring minimal configuration.

These instructions assume you already have an existing Cloudflare account with at least one domain added. We will use dns-domain.com in the examples below.

1. First, you will need to generate a Cloudflare API token for dns01cf to use. This token will need the following two permissions on the zones you want dns01cf to access.

Level: Zone
Category: DNS
Access: Edit

Level: Zone
Category: Zone
Access: Read

2. Next, create a new Cloudflare Worker for dns01cf. Open the Quick Edit editor, clear the contents and copy the contents of the worker.js file in this repository into the editor, then click "Save and deploy".

   Note: This documentation will assume you named your Cloudflare Worker dns01cf and will use an example Worker hostname of dns01cf.foobar.workers.dev.

3. Then navigate to the dns01cf Worker Settings tab and add the following three environment variables listed below, as well as any of the optional ones listed on the documentation site.

   NOTICE	It is STRONGLY recommended that you click the Encrypt button when adding CF_API_TOKEN and TOKEN_SECRET, as they contain sensitive information.

   CF_API_TOKEN

   • Set this to the Cloudflare API token you created a moment ago.

   TOKEN_SECRET

   • This is a secret password used by dns01cf when generating and validating ACME client tokens. Be sure to remember this secret or store it securely, as you will need it whenever you generate new ACME client tokens.

   ENABLE_CREATE_TOKEN

   • This must be set to true to enable creating ACME client tokens.

   Now click "Save and deploy".

4. You can optionally enable a scheduled cron job that periodically performs two actions:

   1. Deletes old dns01cf DNS records that were not deleted by ACME clients (e.g. when using the acmedns listener)
   2. Sends us anonymous telemetry so we can roughly estimate how many people are using dns01cf
      • This only sends the current running version of dns01cf. You can disable this by setting the DISABLE_ANON_TELEMETRY environment variable to false.

   It is suggested to schedule this to run every 6 hours.

Note: To create an ACME client token in step one, you must make sure the ENABLE_CREATE_TOKEN environment variable is set to true as described in INSTALLATION above.

1. Create an ACME client token by sending a POST call to dns01cf.foobar.workers.dev/dns01cf/create_token (replace dns01cf.foobar.workers.dev with your Cloudflare Worker hostname), with a JSON payload like below. You will also need to set an "Authorization" request header with a value of the secret you set for the TOKEN_SECRET environment variable in INSTALLATION above. (Do not prefix the value with "Bearer " or anything else.)

   {
     "acl": [
       "example.com",
       "sub.example.com",
       "!not-allowed.website.net",
       "*website.net"
     ],
     "aud": "CLOUDFLARE_ZONE_ID",
     "exp": 1234567890,
     "sub": "acme-challenges.dns-domain.com"
   }

   Only the acl list is required, the rest are optional. Each part of that JSON object is as follows:

   acl

   • [REQUIRED] A list of hostnames where the ACME client is allowed (or specifically not allowed) to set TXT DNS records for ACME DNS-01 challenges.

   Each ACL must be the full hostname of an ACME DNS-01 challenge unless sub is set, in which case you can omit the sub suffix from your ACLs. You do not need to define the _acme-challenge. prefix for each ACL unless the ACL_STRICT_ACME_HOSTNAME environment variable is set to true. An ACL entry can be prefixed with a ! to explicitly block an ACME client from modifying it (useful when followed by wildcard ACLs). ACLs are evaluated in order and halt on first match.

   NOTE: Wildcards are supported! This uses the URLPattern API, however it is strongly recommended that you only use wildcard tokens and not full regular expressions.

   WARNING: When using wildcards while aud is not defined, be careful if using wildcards in the root domain especially if you have multiple similar domains. For example, if an ACME client has an ACL of "foo*com" and you have domains of foobar.com and foofoo.com, dns01cf will choose whichever zone Cloudflare returns first and attempt to assign the DNS record to that zone.

   aud

   • [OPTIONAL] A single Cloudflare Zone ID which if set will limit the ACME client to only this zone.

   Setting this also improves performance by removing the need for dns01cf to perform a Cloudflare Zone ID lookup for each ACME client call.

   NOTE: If this is set, sub (if also set) must match this zone ID. Otherwise all domains in acl must match this zone ID.

   exp

   • [OPTIONAL] A Unix timestamp (in UTC) when the ACME client token should expire.

   sub

   • [OPTIONAL] A single hostname containing a valid domain in your Cloudflare account that will act as a prefix for all ACLs and ACME DNS-01 challenges.

   If you have many ACLs all using the same root domain or sub-domain (e.g. acme-challenges.dns-domain.com), you can instead simply define that here rather than add it to each ACL entry.

2. When you are finished creating ACME client tokens, you should change the ENABLE_CREATE_TOKEN dns01cf environment variable to false or simply delete it.

3. Configure your ACME client to make a POST call to dns01cf.foobar.workers.dev/dns01cf/set_record or dns01cf.foobar.workers.dev/dns01cf/delete_record (replace dns01cf.foobar.workers.dev with your Cloudflare Worker hostname), with a JSON payload like below. Your ACME client will also need to set an "Authorization" request header with a value of Bearer [token] (where [token] is the ACME client token you generated earlier).

   {
     "fqdn": "_acme-challenge.foo.bar.example.com.acme-challenges.dns-domain.com",
     "value": "contents of the ACME DNS-01 challenge"
   }

   The example above assumes dns01cf is using a domain alias setup as described in SCENARIOS above.

If you would like to contribute to dns01cf, please first read our contributing and code of conduct documents. Then fork this repository, and open a pull request with your contribution. You will also need to digitally sign a Contributor License Agreement when submitting your first pull request.

You can also sponsor us by heading to our DonorBox, or by checking our donation page for other options.

Thank you for your interest in supporting our work! ❤️

dns01cf uses the following softwares and services:

• JavaScript
• Cloudflare
• GitHub
• CLA Assistant
• Parts of tsndr/cloudflare-worker-jwt

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