Automate AWS Certificate Manager email validation

Email-validated ACM certificates normally require manual action by the domain owner. Organizations dealing with large numbers of email-validated certificates may prefer to create a parser that can automate the required responses. To assist customers using email validation, the information in this section describes the templates used for domain validation email messages and the workflow involved in completing the validation process.

Validation email templates

Validation email messages have one of the two following formats, depending on whether a new certificate is being requested or an existing certificate is being renewed. The content of the highlighted strings should be replaced with values that are specific to the domain being validated.

Validating a new certificate

Email template text:

Greetings from Amazon Web Services,

We received a request to issue an SSL/TLS certificate for requested_domain.

Verify that the following domain, AWS account ID, and certificate identifier correspond 
to a request from you or someone in your organization.

Domain: fqdn
AWS account ID: account_id
AWS Region name: region_name
Certificate Identifier: certificate_identifier

To approve this request, go to Amazon Certificate Approvals 
(https://region_name.acm-certificates.amazon.com/approvals?code=validation_code&context=validation_context) 
and follow the instructions on the page.

This email is intended solely for authorized individuals for fqdn. To express any concerns
about this email or if this email has reached you in error, forward it along with a brief 
explanation of your concern to [e-mail].

Sincerely,
Amazon Web Services

Validating a certificate for renewal

Email template text:

Greetings from Amazon Web Services,

We received a request to issue an SSL/TLS certificate for requested_domain. 
This email is a request to validate ownership of the domain in order to renew
the existing, currently in use, certificate. Certificates have defined 
validity periods and email validated certificates, like this one, require you 
to re-validate for the certificate to renew.

Verify that the following domain, AWS account ID, and certificate identifier 
correspond to a request from you or someone in your organization.

Domain: fqdn
AWS account ID: account_id
AWS Region name: region_name
Certificate Identifier: certificate_identifier

To approve this request, go to Amazon Certificate Approvals at
https://region_name.acm-certificates.amazon.com/approvals?code=$validation_code&context=$validation_context
and follow the instructions on the page.

This email is intended solely for authorized individuals for fqdn. You can see
more about how AWS Certificate Manager validation works here - 
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/acm/latest/userguide/email-validation.html.
To express any concerns about this email or if this email has reached you in 
error, forward it along with a brief explanation of your concern to 
[e-mail].

Sincerely,
Amazon Web Services

--
Amazon Web Services, Inc. is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. Amazon.com is a
registered trademark of Amazon.com, Inc.

This message produced and distributed by Amazon Web Services, Inc.,
410 Terry Ave. North, Seattle, WA 98109-5210.

(c)2015-2022, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Our privacy policy is posted at https://aws.amazon.com/privacy					

Once you receive a new validation message from AWS, we recommend that you use it as the most up-to-date and authoritative template for your parser. Customers with message parsers designed before November, 2020, should note the following changes that may have been made to the template:

• The email subject line now reads "Certificate request for domain name" instead of "Certificate approval for domain name".

• The AWS account ID is now presented without dashes or hyphens. 

• The Certificate Identifier now presents the entire certificate ARN instead of a shortened form, for example, arn:aws:acm:us-east-1:000000000000:certificate/3b4d78e1-0882-4f51-954a-298ee44ff369 rather than 3b4d78e1-0882-4f51-954a-298ee44ff369.

• The certificate approval URL now contains acm-certificates.amazon.com instead of certificates.amazon.com.

• The approval form opened by clicking the certificate approval URL now contains the approval button. The name of the approval button div is now approve-button instead of approval_button.

• Validation messages for both newly requested certificates and renewing certificates have the same email format.

Validation workflow

This section provides information about the renewal workflow for email-validated certificates.

• When the ACM console processes a multi-domain certificate request, it sends validation email messages to the domain name or the validation domain that you specify when you request a public certificate. The domain owner needs to validate an email message for each domain before ACM can issue the certificate. For more information, see Using Email to Validate Domain Ownership.

• Email validation for multi-domain certificate requests using the ACM API or CLI results in an email message being sent by each requested domain, even if the request includes subdomains of other domains in the request. The domain owner needs to validate an email message for each of these domains before ACM can issue the certificate.

  If you resend emails for an existing certificate through the ACM console, emails will be sent to the validation domain specified in the original certificate request, or the exact domain if no validation domain was specified. To receive validation emails at a different domain, you can request a new certificate, specifying the validation domain that you want to use for validation. Alternatively, you can call ResendValidationEmail with the ValidationDomain parameter using the API, SDK, or CLI. However, the validation domain specified in the ResendValidationEmail request is only used for that call and is not saved to the certificate Amazon Resource Name (ARN) for future validation emails. You must call ResendValidationEmail each time you wish to receive a validation email at a domain name that was not specified in the original certificate request.

  Note

  Prior to November, 2020, customers needed to validate only the apex domain and ACM would issue a certificate that also covered any subdomains. Customers with message parsers designed before that time should note the change to the email validation workflow.

• With the ACM API or CLI, you can force all validation email messages for a multi-domain certificate request to be sent to the apex domain. In the API, use the DomainValidationOptions parameter of the RequestCertificate action to specify a value for ValidationDomain, which is a member of the DomainValidationOption type. In the CLI, use the --domain-validation-options parameter of the request-certificate command to specify a value for ValidationDomain.