Amazon SQS Key management

Amazon SQS integrates with the AWS Key Management Service (KMS) to manage KMS keys for server-side encryption (SSE). See Encryption at rest in Amazon SQS for SSE information and key management definitions. Amazon SQS uses KMS keys to validate and secure the data keys that encrypt and decrypt the messages. The following sections provide information about working with KMS keys and data keys in the Amazon SQS service.

Configuring AWS KMS permissions

Every KMS key must have a key policy. Note that you cannot modify the key policy of an AWS managed KMS key for Amazon SQS. The policy for this KMS key includes permissions for all principals in the account (that are authorized to use Amazon SQS) to use encrypted queues.

For a customer managed KMS key, you must configure the key policy to add permissions for each queue producer and consumer. To do this, you name the producer and consumer as users in the KMS key policy. For more information about AWS KMS permissions, see AWS KMS resources and operations or AWS KMS API permissions reference in the AWS Key Management Service Developer Guide.

Alternatively, you can specify the required permissions in an IAM policy assigned to the principals that produce and consume encrypted messages. For more information, see Using IAM Policies with AWS KMS in the AWS Key Management Service Developer Guide.

Note

While you can configure global permissions to send to and receive from Amazon SQS, AWS KMS requires explicitly naming the full ARN of KMS keys in specific regions in the Resource section of an IAM policy.

Configure KMS permissions for AWS services

Several AWS services act as event sources that can send events to Amazon SQS queues. To allow these event sources to work with encrypted queues, you must create a customer managed KMS key and add permissions in the key policy for the service to use the required AWS KMS API methods. Perform the following steps to configure the permissions.

Warning

When changing the KMS key for encrypting your Amazon SQS messages, be aware that existing messages encrypted with the old KMS key will remain encrypted with that key. To decrypt these messages, you must retain the old KMS key and ensure that its key policy grants Amazon SQS the permissions for kms:Decrypt and kms:GenerateDataKey. After updating to a new KMS key for encrypting new messages, ensure all existing messages encrypted with the old KMS key are processed and removed from the queue before deleting or disabling the old KMS key.

1. Create a customer managed KMS key. For more information, see Creating Keys in the AWS Key Management Service Developer Guide.

2. To allow the AWS service event source to use the kms:GenerateDataKey and kms:Decrypt API methods, add the following statement to the KMS key policy.

   {
      "Version": "2012-10-17",
         "Statement": [{
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {
               "Service": "service.amazonaws.com"
            },
            "Action": [
               "kms:GenerateDataKey",
               "kms:Decrypt"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
          }]
   }

   Replace "service" in the above example with the Service name of the event source. Event sources include the following services.

   Event source	Service name
   Amazon CloudWatch Events	events.amazonaws.com
   Amazon S3 event notifications	s3.amazonaws.com
   Amazon SNS topic subscriptions	sns.amazonaws.com

3. Configure an existing SSE queue using the ARN of your KMS key.

4. Provide the ARN of the encrypted queue to the event source.

Configure AWS KMS permissions for producers

When the data key reuse period expires, the producer's next call to SendMessage or SendMessageBatch also triggers calls to kms:GenerateDataKey and kms:Decrypt. The call to kms:Decrypt is to verify the integrity of the new data key before using it. Therefore, the producer must have the kms:GenerateDataKey and kms:Decrypt permissions for the KMS key.

Add the following statement to the IAM policy of the producer. Remember to use the correct ARN values for the key resource and the queue resource.

{
   "Version": "2012-10-17",
      "Statement": [{
         "Effect": "Allow",
         "Action": [
            "kms:GenerateDataKey",
            "kms:Decrypt"
         ],
         "Resource":  "arn:aws:kms:us-east-2:123456789012:key/1234abcd-12ab-34cd-56ef-1234567890ab"
         }, {
         "Effect": "Allow",
         "Action": [
            "sqs:SendMessage" 
         ],
         "Resource": "arn:aws:sqs:*:123456789012:MyQueue"
      }]
}

Configure AWS KMS permissions for consumers

When the data key reuse period expires, the consumer's next call to ReceiveMessage also triggers a call to kms:Decrypt, to verify the integrity of the new data key before using it. Therefore, the consumer must have the kms:Decrypt permission for any KMS key that is used to encrypt the messages in the specified queue. If the queue acts as a dead-letter queue, the consumer must also have the kms:Decrypt permission for any KMS key that is used to encrypt the messages in the source queue. Add the following statement to the IAM policy of the consumer. Remember to use the correct ARN values for the key resource and the queue resource.

{
   "Version": "2012-10-17",
      "Statement": [{
         "Effect": "Allow",
         "Action": [
            "kms:Decrypt"
         ],
         "Resource": "arn:aws:kms:us-east-2:123456789012:key/1234abcd-12ab-34cd-56ef-1234567890ab"
         }, {
         "Effect": "Allow",
         "Action": [
            "sqs:ReceiveMessage"
         ],
         "Resource": "arn:aws:sqs:*:123456789012:MyQueue"
      }]
}

Configure AWS KMS permissions with confused deputy protection

When the principal in a key policy statement is an AWS service principal, you can use the aws:SourceArn or aws:SourceAccount global condition keys to protect against the confused deputy scenario. To use these condition keys, set the value to the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the resource that is being encrypted. If you don't know the ARN of the resource, use aws:SourceAccount instead.

In this KMS key policy, a specific resource from service that is owned by account 111122223333 is allowed to call KMS for Decrypt and GenerateDataKey actions, which occur during SSE usage of Amazon SQS.

{
	"Version": "2012-10-17",
	"Statement": [{
		"Effect": "Allow",
		"Principal": {
            "Service": "<replaceable>service</replaceable>.amazonaws.com"
		},
		"Action": [
			"kms:GenerateDataKey",
			"kms:Decrypt"
		],
		"Resource": "*",
		"Condition": {
			"ArnEquals": {
				"aws:SourceArn": [
					"arn:aws:service::111122223333:resource"
				]
			}
		}
	}]
}

When using SSE enabled Amazon SQS queues, the following services support aws:SourceArn:

• Amazon SNS

• Amazon S3

• CloudWatch Events

• AWS Lambda

• CodeBuild

• Amazon Connect Customer Profiles

• AWS Auto Scaling

• Amazon Chime

Understanding the data key reuse period

The data key reuse period defines the maximum duration for Amazon SQS to reuse the same data key. When the data key reuse period ends, Amazon SQS generates a new data key. Note the following guidelines about the reuse period.

• A shorter reuse period provides better security but results in more calls to AWS KMS, which might incur charges beyond the Free Tier.

• Although the data key is cached separately for encryption and for decryption, the reuse period applies to both copies of the data key.

• When the data key reuse period ends, the next call to SendMessage or SendMessageBatch typically triggers a call to the AWS KMS GenerateDataKey method to get a new data key. Also, the next calls to SendMessage and ReceiveMessage will each trigger a call to AWS KMS Decrypt to verify the integrity of the data key before using it.

• Principals (AWS accounts or users) don't share data keys (messages sent by unique principals always get unique data keys). Therefore, the volume of calls to AWS KMS is a multiple of the number of unique principals in use during the data key reuse period.

Estimating AWS KMS costs

To predict costs and better understand your AWS bill, you might want to know how often Amazon SQS uses your KMS key.

Note

Although the following formula can give you a very good idea of expected costs, actual costs might be higher because of the distributed nature of Amazon SQS.

To calculate the number of API requests (R) per queue, use the following formula:

R = (B / D) * (2 * P + C)

B is the billing period (in seconds).

D is the data key reuse period (in seconds).

P is the number of producing principals that send to the Amazon SQS queue.

C is the number of consuming principals that receive from the Amazon SQS queue.

Important

In general, producing principals incur double the cost of consuming principals. For more information, see Understanding the data key reuse period.

If the producer and consumer have different users, the cost increases.

The following are example calculations. For exact pricing information, see AWS Key Management Service Pricing.

Example 1: Calculating the number of AWS KMS API calls for 2 principals and 1 queue

This example assumes the following:

• The billing period is January 1-31 (2,678,400 seconds).

• The data key reuse period is set to 5 minutes (300 seconds).

• There is 1 queue.

• There is 1 producing principal and 1 consuming principal.

(2,678,400 / 300) * (2 * 1 + 1) = 26,784

Example 2: Calculating the number of AWS KMS API calls for multiple producers and consumers and 2 queues

This example assumes the following:

• The billing period is February 1-28 (2,419,200 seconds).

• The data key reuse period is set to 24 hours (86,400 seconds).

• There are 2 queues.

• The first queue has 3 producing principals and 1 consuming principal.

• The second queue has 5 producing principals and 2 consuming principals.

(2,419,200 / 86,400 * (2 * 3 + 1)) + (2,419,200 / 86,400 * (2 * 5 + 2)) = 532

AWS KMS errors

When you work with Amazon SQS and AWS KMS, you might encounter errors. The following references describe the errors and possible troubleshooting solutions.

• Common AWS KMS errors

• AWS KMS Decrypt errors

• AWS KMS GenerateDataKey errors