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AWS Key Management Service
API Reference (API Version 2014-11-01)

AWS Documentation » AWS KMS » API Reference » Actions » CreateKey

CreateKey

Creates a customer master key (CMK) in the caller's AWS account.

You can use a CMK to encrypt small amounts of data (4 KiB or less) directly, but CMKs are more commonly used to encrypt data encryption keys (DEKs), which are used to encrypt raw data. For more information about DEKs and the difference between CMKs and DEKs, see the following:

You cannot use this operation to create a CMK in a different AWS account.

Request Syntax

{
   "BypassPolicyLockoutSafetyCheck": boolean,
   "Description": "string",
   "KeyUsage": "string",
   "Origin": "string",
   "Policy": "string",
   "Tags": [ 
      { 
         "TagKey": "string",
         "TagValue": "string"
      }
   ]
}

Request Parameters

For information about the parameters that are common to all actions, see Common Parameters.

The request accepts the following data in JSON format.

Note

In the following list, the required parameters are described first.

BypassPolicyLockoutSafetyCheck

A flag to indicate whether to bypass the key policy lockout safety check.

Important

Setting this value to true increases the likelihood that the CMK becomes unmanageable. Do not set this value to true indiscriminately.

For more information, refer to the scenario in the Default Key Policy section in the AWS Key Management Service Developer Guide.

Use this parameter only when you include a policy in the request and you intend to prevent the principal that is making the request from making a subsequent PutKeyPolicy request on the CMK.

The default value is false.

Type: Boolean

Required: No

Description

A description of the CMK.

Use a description that helps you decide whether the CMK is appropriate for a task.

Type: String

Length Constraints: Minimum length of 0. Maximum length of 8192.

Required: No

KeyUsage

The intended use of the CMK.

You can use CMKs only for symmetric encryption and decryption.

Type: String

Valid Values: ENCRYPT_DECRYPT

Required: No

Origin

The source of the CMK's key material.

The default is AWS_KMS, which means AWS KMS creates the key material. When this parameter is set to EXTERNAL, the request creates a CMK without key material so that you can import key material from your existing key management infrastructure. For more information about importing key material into AWS KMS, see Importing Key Material in the AWS Key Management Service Developer Guide.

The CMK's Origin is immutable and is set when the CMK is created.

Type: String

Valid Values: AWS_KMS | EXTERNAL

Required: No

Policy

The key policy to attach to the CMK.

If you specify a policy and do not set BypassPolicyLockoutSafetyCheck to true, the policy must meet the following criteria:

  • It must allow the principal that is making the CreateKey request to make a subsequent PutKeyPolicy request on the CMK. This reduces the likelihood that the CMK becomes unmanageable. For more information, refer to the scenario in the Default Key Policy section in the AWS Key Management Service Developer Guide.

  • The principals that are specified in the key policy must exist and be visible to AWS KMS. When you create a new AWS principal (for example, an IAM user or role), you might need to enforce a delay before specifying the new principal in a key policy because the new principal might not immediately be visible to AWS KMS. For more information, see Changes that I make are not always immediately visible in the IAM User Guide.

If you do not specify a policy, AWS KMS attaches a default key policy to the CMK. For more information, see Default Key Policy in the AWS Key Management Service Developer Guide.

The policy size limit is 32 kilobytes (32768 bytes).

Type: String

Length Constraints: Minimum length of 1. Maximum length of 131072.

Pattern: [\u0009\u000A\u000D\u0020-\u00FF]+

Required: No

Tags

One or more tags. Each tag consists of a tag key and a tag value. Tag keys and tag values are both required, but tag values can be empty (null) strings.

Use this parameter to tag the CMK when it is created. Alternately, you can omit this parameter and instead tag the CMK after it is created using TagResource.

Type: Array of Tag objects

Required: No

Response Syntax

{
   "KeyMetadata": { 
      "Arn": "string",
      "AWSAccountId": "string",
      "CreationDate": number,
      "DeletionDate": number,
      "Description": "string",
      "Enabled": boolean,
      "ExpirationModel": "string",
      "KeyId": "string",
      "KeyManager": "string",
      "KeyState": "string",
      "KeyUsage": "string",
      "Origin": "string",
      "ValidTo": number
   }
}

Response Elements

If the action is successful, the service sends back an HTTP 200 response.

The following data is returned in JSON format by the service.

KeyMetadata

Metadata associated with the CMK.

Type: KeyMetadata object

Errors

For information about the errors that are common to all actions, see Common Errors.

DependencyTimeoutException

The system timed out while trying to fulfill the request. The request can be retried.

HTTP Status Code: 500

InvalidArnException

The request was rejected because a specified ARN was not valid.

HTTP Status Code: 400

KMSInternalException

The request was rejected because an internal exception occurred. The request can be retried.

HTTP Status Code: 400

LimitExceededException

The request was rejected because a limit was exceeded. For more information, see Limits in the AWS Key Management Service Developer Guide.

HTTP Status Code: 400

MalformedPolicyDocumentException

The request was rejected because the specified policy is not syntactically or semantically correct.

HTTP Status Code: 400

TagException

The request was rejected because one or more tags are not valid.

HTTP Status Code: 400

UnsupportedOperationException

The request was rejected because a specified parameter is not supported or a specified resource is not valid for this operation.

HTTP Status Code: 400

Examples

The following examples are formatted for legibility.

Example Request

Copy
POST / HTTP/1.1
Host: kms.us-east-2.amazonaws.com
Content-Type: application/x-amz-json-1.1
Authorization: AWS4-HMAC-SHA256\
 Credential=AKIAI44QH8DHBEXAMPLE/20170705/us-east-2/kms/aws4_request,\
 SignedHeaders=content-type;host;x-amz-date;x-amz-target,\
 Signature=8fb59aa17854a97df47aae69f560b66178ed0b5e1ebe334be516c4f3f59acedc
X-Amz-Target: TrentService.CreateKey
X-Amz-Date: 20170705T210455Z
Content-Length: 62

{
  "Tags": [{
    "TagValue": "ExampleUser",
    "TagKey": "CreatedBy"
  }]
}

Example Response

Copy
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Server
Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2017 21:04:55 GMT
Content-Type: application/x-amz-json-1.1
Content-Length: 335
Connection: keep-alive
x-amzn-RequestId: 98b2de61-61c5-11e7-bd87-9fc4a74e147b

{
  "KeyMetadata": {
    "AWSAccountId": "111122223333",
    "Arn": "arn:aws:kms:us-east-2:111122223333:key/1234abcd-12ab-34cd-56ef-1234567890ab",
    "CreationDate": 1.499288695918E9,
    "Description": "",
    "Enabled": true,
    "KeyId": "1234abcd-12ab-34cd-56ef-1234567890ab",
    "KeyManager": "CUSTOMER",
    "KeyState": "Enabled",
    "KeyUsage": "ENCRYPT_DECRYPT",
    "Origin": "AWS_KMS"
  }
}

See Also

For more information about using this API in one of the language-specific AWS SDKs, see the following: