Request Parameters Response Elements Errors Examples See Also

AssumeRoleWithSAML

Returns a set of temporary security credentials for users who have been authenticated via a SAML authentication response. This operation provides a mechanism for tying an enterprise identity store or directory to role-based AWS access without user-specific credentials or configuration. For a comparison of AssumeRoleWithSAML with the other API operations that produce temporary credentials, see Requesting Temporary Security Credentials and Compare AWS STS credentials in the IAM User Guide.

The temporary security credentials returned by this operation consist of an access key ID, a secret access key, and a security token. Applications can use these temporary security credentials to sign calls to AWS services.

Session Duration

By default, the temporary security credentials created by AssumeRoleWithSAML last for one hour. However, you can use the optional DurationSeconds parameter to specify the duration of your session. Your role session lasts for the duration that you specify, or until the time specified in the SAML authentication response's SessionNotOnOrAfter value, whichever is shorter. You can provide a DurationSeconds value from 900 seconds (15 minutes) up to the maximum session duration setting for the role. This setting can have a value from 1 hour to 12 hours. To learn how to view the maximum value for your role, see View the Maximum Session Duration Setting for a Role in the IAM User Guide. The maximum session duration limit applies when you use the AssumeRole* API operations or the assume-role* CLI commands. However the limit does not apply when you use those operations to create a console URL. For more information, see Using IAM Roles in the IAM User Guide.

Note

Role chaining limits your AWS CLI or AWS API role session to a maximum of one hour. When you use the AssumeRole API operation to assume a role, you can specify the duration of your role session with the DurationSeconds parameter. You can specify a parameter value of up to 43200 seconds (12 hours), depending on the maximum session duration setting for your role. However, if you assume a role using role chaining and provide a DurationSeconds parameter value greater than one hour, the operation fails.

Permissions

The temporary security credentials created by AssumeRoleWithSAML can be used to make API calls to any AWS service with the following exception: you cannot call the AWS STS GetFederationToken or GetSessionToken API operations.

(Optional) You can pass inline or managed session policies to this operation. You can pass a single JSON policy document to use as an inline session policy. You can also specify up to 10 managed policy Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) to use as managed session policies. The plaintext that you use for both inline and managed session policies can't exceed 2,048 characters. Passing policies to this operation returns new temporary credentials. The resulting session's permissions are the intersection of the role's identity-based policy and the session policies. You can use the role's temporary credentials in subsequent AWS API calls to access resources in the account that owns the role. You cannot use session policies to grant more permissions than those allowed by the identity-based policy of the role that is being assumed. For more information, see Session Policies in the IAM User Guide.

Calling AssumeRoleWithSAML does not require the use of AWS security credentials. The identity of the caller is validated by using keys in the metadata document that is uploaded for the SAML provider entity for your identity provider.

Important

Calling AssumeRoleWithSAML can result in an entry in your AWS CloudTrail logs. The entry includes the value in the NameID element of the SAML assertion. We recommend that you use a NameIDType that is not associated with any personally identifiable information (PII). For example, you could instead use the persistent identifier (urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:persistent).

Tags

(Optional) You can configure your IdP to pass attributes into your SAML assertion as session tags. Each session tag consists of a key name and an associated value. For more information about session tags, see Passing Session Tags in AWS STS in the IAM User Guide.

You can pass up to 50 session tags. The plaintext session tag keys can’t exceed 128 characters and the values can’t exceed 256 characters. For these and additional limits, see IAM and AWS STS Character Limits in the IAM User Guide.

Note

An AWS conversion compresses the passed inline session policy, managed policy ARNs, and session tags into a packed binary format that has a separate limit. Your request can fail for this limit even if your plaintext meets the other requirements. The PackedPolicySize response element indicates by percentage how close the policies and tags for your request are to the upper size limit.

You can pass a session tag with the same key as a tag that is attached to the role. When you do, session tags override the role's tags with the same key.

An administrator must grant you the permissions necessary to pass session tags. The administrator can also create granular permissions to allow you to pass only specific session tags. For more information, see Tutorial: Using Tags for Attribute-Based Access Control in the IAM User Guide.

You can set the session tags as transitive. Transitive tags persist during role chaining. For more information, see Chaining Roles with Session Tags in the IAM User Guide.

SAML Configuration

Before your application can call AssumeRoleWithSAML, you must configure your SAML identity provider (IdP) to issue the claims required by AWS. Additionally, you must use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to create a SAML provider entity in your AWS account that represents your identity provider. You must also create an IAM role that specifies this SAML provider in its trust policy.

For more information, see the following resources:

About SAML 2.0-based Federation in the IAM User Guide.
Creating SAML Identity Providers in the IAM User Guide.
Configuring a Relying Party and Claims in the IAM User Guide.
Creating a Role for SAML 2.0 Federation in the IAM User Guide.

Request Parameters

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

DurationSeconds

The duration, in seconds, of the role session. Your role session lasts for the duration that you specify for the DurationSeconds parameter, or until the time specified in the SAML authentication response's SessionNotOnOrAfter value, whichever is shorter. You can provide a DurationSeconds value from 900 seconds (15 minutes) up to the maximum session duration setting for the role. This setting can have a value from 1 hour to 12 hours. If you specify a value higher than this setting, the operation fails. For example, if you specify a session duration of 12 hours, but your administrator set the maximum session duration to 6 hours, your operation fails. To learn how to view the maximum value for your role, see View the Maximum Session Duration Setting for a Role in the IAM User Guide.

By default, the value is set to 3600 seconds.

Note

The DurationSeconds parameter is separate from the duration of a console session that you might request using the returned credentials. The request to the federation endpoint for a console sign-in token takes a SessionDuration parameter that specifies the maximum length of the console session. For more information, see Creating a URL that Enables Federated Users to Access the AWS Management Console in the IAM User Guide.

Type: Integer

Valid Range: Minimum value of 900. Maximum value of 43200.

Required: No

Policy

An IAM policy in JSON format that you want to use as an inline session policy.

This parameter is optional. Passing policies to this operation returns new temporary credentials. The resulting session's permissions are the intersection of the role's identity-based policy and the session policies. You can use the role's temporary credentials in subsequent AWS API calls to access resources in the account that owns the role. You cannot use session policies to grant more permissions than those allowed by the identity-based policy of the role that is being assumed. For more information, see Session Policies in the IAM User Guide.

The plaintext that you use for both inline and managed session policies can't exceed 2,048 characters. The JSON policy characters can be any ASCII character from the space character to the end of the valid character list (\u0020 through \u00FF). It can also include the tab (\u0009), linefeed (\u000A), and carriage return (\u000D) characters.

For more information about role session permissions, see Session policies.

Note

Type: String

Length Constraints: Minimum length of 1. Maximum length of 2048.

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

Required: No

PolicyArns.member.N

The Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) of the IAM managed policies that you want to use as managed session policies. The policies must exist in the same account as the role.

This parameter is optional. You can provide up to 10 managed policy ARNs. However, the plaintext that you use for both inline and managed session policies can't exceed 2,048 characters. For more information about ARNs, see Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) and AWS Service Namespaces in the AWS General Reference.

Note

Passing policies to this operation returns new temporary credentials. The resulting session's permissions are the intersection of the role's identity-based policy and the session policies. You can use the role's temporary credentials in subsequent AWS API calls to access resources in the account that owns the role. You cannot use session policies to grant more permissions than those allowed by the identity-based policy of the role that is being assumed. For more information, see Session Policies in the IAM User Guide.

Type: Array of PolicyDescriptorType objects

Required: No

PrincipalArn

The Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the SAML provider in IAM that describes the IdP.

Type: String

Length Constraints: Minimum length of 20. Maximum length of 2048.

Pattern: [\u0009\u000A\u000D\u0020-\u007E\u0085\u00A0-\uD7FF\uE000-\uFFFD\u10000-\u10FFFF]+

Required: Yes

RoleArn

The Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the role that the caller is assuming.

Type: String

Length Constraints: Minimum length of 20. Maximum length of 2048.

Pattern: [\u0009\u000A\u000D\u0020-\u007E\u0085\u00A0-\uD7FF\uE000-\uFFFD\u10000-\u10FFFF]+

Required: Yes

SAMLAssertion

The base64 encoded SAML authentication response provided by the IdP.

For more information, see Configuring a Relying Party and Adding Claims in the IAM User Guide.

Type: String

Length Constraints: Minimum length of 4. Maximum length of 100000.

Required: Yes

Response Elements

The following elements are returned by the service.

AssumedRoleUser

The identifiers for the temporary security credentials that the operation returns.

Type: AssumedRoleUser object

Audience

The value of the Recipient attribute of the SubjectConfirmationData element of the SAML assertion.

Type: String

Credentials

The temporary security credentials, which include an access key ID, a secret access key, and a security (or session) token.

Note

The size of the security token that AWS STS API operations return is not fixed. We strongly recommend that you make no assumptions about the maximum size.

Type: Credentials object

Issuer

The value of the Issuer element of the SAML assertion.

Type: String

NameQualifier

A hash value based on the concatenation of the following:

The Issuer response value.
The AWS account ID.
The friendly name (the last part of the ARN) of the SAML provider in IAM.

The combination of NameQualifier and Subject can be used to uniquely identify a user.

The following pseudocode shows how the hash value is calculated:

BASE64 ( SHA1 ( "https://example.com/saml" + "123456789012" + "/MySAMLIdP" ) )

Type: String

PackedPolicySize

A percentage value that indicates the packed size of the session policies and session tags combined passed in the request. The request fails if the packed size is greater than 100 percent, which means the policies and tags exceeded the allowed space.

Type: Integer

Valid Range: Minimum value of 0.

SourceIdentity

The value in the SourceIdentity attribute in the SAML assertion. The source identity value persists across chained role sessions.

You can require users to set a source identity value when they assume a role. You do this by using the sts:SourceIdentity condition key in a role trust policy. That way, actions that are taken with the role are associated with that user. After the source identity is set, the value cannot be changed. It is present in the request for all actions that are taken by the role and persists across chained role sessions. You can configure your SAML identity provider to use an attribute associated with your users, like user name or email, as the source identity when calling AssumeRoleWithSAML. You do this by adding an attribute to the SAML assertion. For more information about using source identity, see Monitor and control actions taken with assumed roles in the IAM User Guide.

The regex used to validate this parameter is a string of characters consisting of upper- and lower-case alphanumeric characters with no spaces. You can also include underscores or any of the following characters: =,.@-

Type: String

Length Constraints: Minimum length of 2. Maximum length of 64.

Pattern: [\w+=,.@-]*

Subject

The value of the NameID element in the Subject element of the SAML assertion.

Type: String

SubjectType

The format of the name ID, as defined by the Format attribute in the NameID element of the SAML assertion. Typical examples of the format are transient or persistent.

If the format includes the prefix urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format, that prefix is removed. For example, urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:transient is returned as transient. If the format includes any other prefix, the format is returned with no modifications.

Type: String

Errors

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

ExpiredToken

The web identity token that was passed is expired or is not valid. Get a new identity token from the identity provider and then retry the request.

HTTP Status Code: 400

IDPRejectedClaim

The identity provider (IdP) reported that authentication failed. This might be because the claim is invalid.

If this error is returned for the AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity operation, it can also mean that the claim has expired or has been explicitly revoked.

HTTP Status Code: 403

InvalidIdentityToken

The web identity token that was passed could not be validated by AWS. Get a new identity token from the identity provider and then retry the request.

HTTP Status Code: 400

MalformedPolicyDocument

The request was rejected because the policy document was malformed. The error message describes the specific error.

HTTP Status Code: 400

PackedPolicyTooLarge

The request was rejected because the total packed size of the session policies and session tags combined was too large. An AWS conversion compresses the session policy document, session policy ARNs, and session tags into a packed binary format that has a separate limit. The error message indicates by percentage how close the policies and tags are to the upper size limit. For more information, see Passing Session Tags in AWS STS in the IAM User Guide.

You could receive this error even though you meet other defined session policy and session tag limits. For more information, see IAM and AWS STS Entity Character Limits in the IAM User Guide.

HTTP Status Code: 400

RegionDisabled

AWS STS is not activated in the requested region for the account that is being asked to generate credentials. The account administrator must use the IAM console to activate AWS STS in that region. For more information, see Activating and Deactivating AWS STS in an AWS Region in the IAM User Guide.

HTTP Status Code: 403

Examples

Example

This example requires that the TestSaml role and the SAML-test SAML identity provider are configured in IAM. Additionally, this example requires an encoded SAML assertion that includes all of the necessary information. For more information about SAML assertions, see Configuring SAML Assertions for the Authentication Response in the IAM User Guide.

Sample Request


https://sts.amazonaws.com/
?Version=2011-06-15
&Action=AssumeRoleWithSAML
&RoleArn=arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/TestSaml
&PrincipalArn=arn:aws:iam::123456789012:saml-provider/SAML-test 
&SAMLAssertion=VERYLONGENCODEDASSERTIONEXAMPLExzYW1sOkF1ZGllbmNl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&AUTHPARAMS

Sample Response


<AssumeRoleWithSAMLResponse xmlns="https://sts.amazonaws.com/doc/2011-06-15/">
    <AssumeRoleWithSAMLResult>
        <Issuer> https://integ.example.com/idp/shibboleth</Issuer>
        <AssumedRoleUser>
            <Arn>arn:aws:sts::123456789012:assumed-role/TestSaml</Arn>
            <AssumedRoleId>ARO456EXAMPLE789:TestSaml</AssumedRoleId>
        </AssumedRoleUser>
        <Credentials>
            <AccessKeyId>ASIAV3ZUEFP6EXAMPLE</AccessKeyId>
            <SecretAccessKey>8P+SQvWIuLnKhh8d++jpw0nNmQRBZvNEXAMPLEKEY</SecretAccessKey>
            <SessionToken> IQoJb3JpZ2luX2VjEOz////////////////////wEXAMPLEtMSJHMEUCIDoKK3JH9uG
                QE1z0sINr5M4jk+Na8KHDcCYRVjJCZEvOAiEA3OvJGtw1EcViOleS2vhs8VdCKFJQWP
                QrmGdeehM4IC1NtBmUpp2wUE8phUZampKsburEDy0KPkyQDYwT7WZ0wq5VSXDvp75YU
                9HFvlRd8Tx6q6fE8YQcHNVXAkiY9q6d+xo0rKwT38xVqr7ZD0u0iPPkUL64lIZbqBAz
                +scqKmlzm8FDrypNC9Yjc8fPOLn9FX9KSYvKTr4rvx3iSIlTJabIQwj2ICCR/oLxBA== </SessionToken>
            <Expiration>2019-11-01T20:26:47Z</Expiration>
        </Credentials>
        <Audience>https://signin.aws.amazon.com/saml</Audience>
        <SubjectType>transient</SubjectType>
        <PackedPolicySize>6</PackedPolicySize>
        <NameQualifier>SbdGOnUkh1i4+EXAMPLExL/jEvs=</NameQualifier>
        <SourceIdentity>SourceIdentityValue</SourceIdentity>
        <Subject>SamlExample</Subject>
    </AssumeRoleWithSAMLResult>
    <ResponseMetadata>
        <RequestId>c6104cbe-af31-11e0-8154-cbc7ccf896c7</RequestId>
    </ResponseMetadata>
</AssumeRoleWithSAMLResponse>