AWS Security Blog

Is your key chain too full for yet another key fob? Ever find yourself locked out of AWS because you didn’t have your key chain on hand? Gemalto, a third-party provider, has just released a new multi-factor authentication (MFA) device in a convenient “credit card” form factor that fits comfortably into a wallet. It works […]

On May 21, AWS launched encryption for EBS volumes, a frequently requested feature, which can help you meet stricter security and encryption compliance requirements. You can now create an encrypted EBS volume and attach it to an EC2 instance. Data on the volume, disk I/O, and snapshots created from the volume are all encrypted. The […]

Updated May 21, 2014: Clarified that for the Mac, the private key is stored in memory and the passphrase in the keychain. Important note: You should enable SSH agent forwarding with caution. When you set up agent forwarding, a socket file is created on the forwarding host, which is the mechanism by which the key […]

July 26, 2017, update: We recommend that you use cross-account access by switching roles in the AWS Management Console. Also see the related documentation: Switching to a Role (AWS Management Console). Last December we described how you can delegate access to your AWS account using IAM roles. Using IAM roles, you can take advantage of […]

Update from January 17, 2018: The techniques demonstrated in this blog post relate to traditional SAML federation for AWS. These techniques are still valid and useful. However, AWS Single Sign-On (AWS SSO) provides analogous capabilities by way of a managed service. If you are just getting started with federating access to your AWS accounts, we recommend […]

Keeping your AWS keys secure is one of the most important things you can do. This week Will Kruse, Security Engineer on the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) team, explains the steps to safeguard your account in the event you inadvertently expose your AWS access key. Your AWS credentials (access key ID and secret access […]

As part of our ongoing efforts to help keep your resources secure, on April 21, 2014, AWS removed the ability to retrieve existing secret access keys for your AWS (root) account. See the updated blog post Where’s My Secret Access Key? for more information about access keys and secret access keys. -Kai

Note: As of March 28, 2017,  Amazon EC2 supports tagging on creation, enforced tag usage, AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) resource-level permissions, and enforced volume encryption. See New – Tag EC2 Instances & EBS Volumes on Creation on the AWS Blog for more information. AWS announced initial support for Amazon EC2 resource-level permissions in July of […]

We have reviewed all AWS services for impact by CVE-2014-0160 (also known as the Heartbleed bug) and have either determined that the services were unaffected or we’ve applied mitigations that do not require customer action. In a few cases, we are recommending that customers rotate SSL certificates or secret keys. For additional detail see AWS […]

This week’s guest blogger, Ajith Ranabahu, Software Development Engineer on the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) team, presents an in-depth look at the IAM policy simulator. Many of you have asked about how to author and troubleshoot access control policies. To help with this task, last year we launched the policy simulator, which makes it easier […]