EJBCA Community 8.3 Release Notes

COMMUNITY EDITION JUNE 2024

The EJBCA team is pleased to announce the newest release of our open-source PKI software EJBCA Community Edition with version 8.3 and thank each and every EJBCA Contributor for your work in getting us here.

These release notes cover new EJBCA Community features and improvements implemented between EJBCA Community 8.2 and EJBCA Community 8.3.

This community release introduces support for hybrid certificates in EJBCA among other notable features, as well as improvements and error corrections.

Highlights

Hybrid Certificates

EJBCA 8.3 introduces support for hybrid certificates, enabling the use of multiple signing keys in a single hybrid CA. Certificates issued by this CA will have signatures and public keys of two different algorithms. Typically, the system is set up to use a quantum-safe algorithm as the alternative algorithm. This setup allows parts of the ecosystem to validate the certificate using both keys and algorithms, while other parts may ignore the non-critical extensions and alternative algorithm, treating the certificate as a traditional RSA/ECC X.509 certificate.

Note that the quantum-safe algorithms currently implemented in EJBCA are NIST draft algorithms and not for production use, see Hybrid CA.

EJBCA updated with top-level menu

EJBCA now has a top-level menu, relocated from the left side to align with other Keyfactor products. The menu structure remains the same, ensuring that existing users can find previous menu items under the corresponding top-level categories.

Documentation on Keyfactor Docs

As of EJBCA 8.3, the EJBCA product documentation is available at docs.keyfactor.com.

Bouncy Castle upgraded to 1.78

Bouncy Castle has been upgraded to 1.78 in EJBCA 8.3.

Announcements

Upcoming Technology Stack upgrade in EJBCA 9

As a Java application running on an application server, EJBCA 8.3 runs on WildFly 24/26 or JBoss EAP 7.4 and supports running on Java 11 or Java 17. Due to changes in recent WildFly versions and JBoss EAP 8 that are not backward compatible with WildFly 26 and JBoss 7.4, the upgrade from EJBCA 8 to the upcoming new major version EJBCA 9 will require a complete tech stack upgrade.

Overview of the EJBCA 8 and EJBCA 9 tech stacks.

EJBCA users with software-based deployments are advised to plan for an upgrade to the EJBCA 9 tech stack once EJBCA 9 is released during the second half of 2024.

Downloads and Resources

EJBCA Community releases follow the release schedule for the Enterprise Edition, including all major releases.

There are several options available for downloading the latest EJBCA Community:

EJBCA Community is available for download from GitHub.
EJBCA Community Container is available for download from Docker Hub.
EJBCA Community container is available for download from the AWS marketplace.
EJBCA Community is available for download from SourceForge.

Get the latest news about EJBCA Community initiatives and open-source products - sign up for our community newsletter.

Find links to downloads, how-to guides, video tutorials, and documentation at ejbca.org.

Want to learn more about our open-source software? Get in touch over at EJBCA Discussions on GitHub, a collective space where you can share feedback and contribute ideas to future releases. We would love to hear from you.