- IAM: Identity Access & Management
AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a web service that helps you securely control access to AWS resources. You use IAM to control who is authenticated (signed in) and authorized (has permissions) to use resources.
- IAM = Identity and Access Management, Global service
- Root account created by default, shouldn’t be used or shared
- Users are people within your organization, and can be grouped
- Groups only contain users, not other groups
- Users don’t have to belong to a group, and user can belong to multiple groups
- Users or Groups can be assigned JSON documents called policies
- These policies define the permissions of the users
- In AWS you apply the least privilege principle: don’t give more permissions than a user needs
- Consists of
- Version: policy language version, always include “2012-10-17”
- Id: an identifier for the policy (optional)
- Statement: one or more individual statements (required)
- Statements consists of
- Sid: an identifier for the statement (optional)
- Effect: whether the statement allows or denies access (Allow, Deny)
- Principal: account/user/role to which this policy applied to
- Action: list of actions this policy allows or denies
- Resource: list of resources to which the actions applied to
- Condition: conditions for when this policy is in effect (optional)
Example:
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": "ec2:Describe*",
"Resource": "*"
},
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": "elasticloadbalancing:Describe*",
"Resource": "*"
},
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": [
"cloudwatch:ListMetrics",
"cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics",
"cloudwatch:Describe*"
],
"Resource": "*"
}
]
}- Strong passwords = higher security for your account
- In AWS, you can setup a password policy:
- Set a minimum password length
- Require specific character types:
- including uppercase letters
- lowercase letters
- numbers
- non-alphanumeric characters
- Allow all IAM users to change their own passwords
- Require users to change their password after some time (password expiration)
- Prevent password re-use
- Some AWS service will need to perform actions on your behalf
- To do so, we will assign permissions to AWS services with IAM Roles
- Common roles:
- EC2 Instance Roles
- Lambda Function Roles
- Roles for CloudFormation
- IAM Credentials Report (account-level)
- a report that lists all your account's users and the status of their various credentials
- IAM Access Advisor (user-level)
- Access advisor shows the service permissions granted to a user and when those services were last accessed.
- You can use this information to revise your policies.
- Don’t use the root account except for AWS account setup
- One physical user = One AWS user
- Assign users to groups and assign permissions to groups
- Create a strong password policy
- Use and enforce the use of Multi Factor Authentication (MFA)
- Create and use Roles for giving permissions to AWS services
- Use Access Keys for Programmatic Access (CLI / SDK)
- Audit permissions of your account with the IAM Credentials Report
- Never share IAM users & Access Keys
| AWS | YOU |
|---|---|
| Infrastructure (global network security) | Users, Groups, Roles, Policies management and monitoring |
| Configuration and vulnerability analysis | Enable MFA on all accounts |
| Compliance validation | Rotate all your keys often, Use IAM tools to apply appropriate permissions, Analyze access patterns & review permissions |
- Users have access to your account and can possibly change configurations or delete resources in your AWS account
- You want to protect your Root Accounts and IAM users
- MFA = password you know + security device you own
- Main benefit of MFA: if a password is stolen or hacked, the account is not compromised
- Virtual MFA device (Support for multiple tokens on a single device.)
- Google Authenticator (phone only)
- Authy (multi-device)
- Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) Security Key (Support for multiple root and IAM users using a single security key)
- YubiKey by Yubico (3rd party)
- Hardware Key Fob MFA Device
- Hardware Key Fob MFA Device for AWS GovCloud (US)
- To access AWS, you have three options:
- AWS Management Console (protected by password + MFA)
- AWS Command Line Interface (CLI): protected by access keys
- AWS Software Developer Kit (SDK) - for code: protected by access keys
- Access Keys are generated through the AWS Console
- Users manage their own access keys
- Access Keys are secret, just like a password. Don’t share them
- Access Key ID ~= username
- Secret Access Key ~= password
- A tool that enables you to interact with AWS services using commands in your command-line shell
- Direct access to the public APIs of AWS services
- You can develop scripts to manage your resources
- It’s open-source https://github.com/aws/aws-cli
- Alternative to using AWS Management Console
- AWS Software Development Kit (AWS SDK)
- Language-specific APIs (set of libraries)
- Enables you to access and manage AWS services programmatically
- Embedded within your application
- Supports
- SDKs (JavaScript, Python, PHP, .NET, Ruby, Java, Go, Node.js, C++)
- Mobile SDKs (Android, iOS, …)
- IoT Device SDKs (Embedded C, Arduino, …)
- Example: AWS CLI is built on AWS SDK for Python
- Users: mapped to a physical user, has a password for AWS Console
- Groups: contains users only
- Policies: JSON document that outlines permissions for users or groups
- Roles: for EC2 instances or AWS services
- Security: MFA + Password Policy
- AWS CLI: manage your AWS services using the command-line
- AWS SDK: manage your AWS services using a programming language
- Access Keys: access AWS using the CLI or SDK
- Audit: IAM Credential Reports & IAM Access Advisor
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