Managing user existence error responses - Amazon Cognito
User creation and authentication operationsPassword reset operationsConfirmation operations

Managing user existence error responses

Amazon Cognito supports customizing error responses returned by user pools. Custom error responses are available for user creation and authentication, password recovery, and confirmation operations.

Use the PreventUserExistenceErrors setting of a user pool app client to enable or disable user existence related errors. When you create a new user pool using the Amazon Cognito user pools API, PreventUserExistenceErrors is false by default. When this value is true, Amazon Cognito responds with nonspecific information to API requests where its response might otherwise disclose that a valid user exists. In the Amazon Cognito API, update this value with a UpdateUserPoolClient request. In the AWS Management Console, create or edit your app client to activate Prevent user existence errors. When you create a new user pool in the AWS Management Console, Prevent user existence errors defaults to enabled.

When you prevent user existence errors in your user pool, Amazon Cognito sign-in and forgot-password APIs return a generic authentication failure response. The error response tells you the user name or password is incorrect. Amazon Cognito account confirmation and password recovery APIs return a response indicating a code was sent to a simulated delivery medium. The error response works when the status is ENABLED and the user doesn't exist. Following are the detailed behaviors for the Amazon Cognito operations when PreventUserExistenceErrors is set to ENABLED.

User creation and authentication operations

You can use either User name password authentication or Secure Remote Password (SRP) authentication with the following operations. You can also customize the errors that you return with custom authentication.

  • AdminInitiateAuth

  • AdminRespondToAuthChallenge

  • InitiateAuth

  • RespondToAuthChallenge

The following list demonstrates how you can customize error responses in user authentication operations.

Username and password authentication

To sign a user in with ADMIN_USER_PASSWORD_AUTH and USER_PASSWORD_AUTH, include the username and password in an AdminInitiateAuth or InitiateAuth API request. Amazon Cognito returns a generic NotAuthorizedException error when either the username or password is incorrect.

Secure Remote Password (SRP) based authentication

To sign a user in with USER_SRP_AUTH, include a username and an SRP_A parameter in an AdminInitiateAuth or InitiateAuth API request. In response, Amazon Cognito returns SRP_B and salt for the user, in accord with the SRP standard. When a user isn't found, Amazon Cognito returns a simulated response in the first step as described in RFC 5054. Amazon Cognito returns the same salt and an internal user ID in Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) format for the same username and user pool combination. When you send a RespondToAuthChallenge API request with proof of password, Amazon Cognito returns a generic NotAuthorizedException error when either username or password is incorrect.

Note

You can simulate a generic response with username and password authentication if you are using verification-based alias attributes, and the immutable username isn't formatted as a UUID.

Custom Authentication Challenge Lambda trigger

If you use the Custom Authentication Challenge Lambda Trigger and you enable error responses, then LambdaChallenge returns a Boolean parameter named UserNotFound. Then it's passed in the request of DefineAuthChallenge, VerifyAuthChallenge, and CreateAuthChallenge Lambda triggers. You can use this trigger to simulate custom authorization challenges for a user that doesn't exist. If you call the Pre-Authentication Lambda trigger for a user that doesn't exist, then Amazon Cognito returns UserNotFound.

The following list demonstrates how you can customize error responses in user creation operations.

SignUp

The SignUp operation returns UsernameExistsException when a username is already taken. If you don't want Amazon Cognito to return a UsernameExistsException error for email addresses and phone numbers when you sign up users in your app, use verification-based alias attributes. For more information about aliases, see the Customizing sign-in attributes section of User pool attributes.

For an example of how Amazon Cognito can prevent the use of SignUp API requests to discover users in your user pool, see Preventing UsernameExistsException errors for email addresses and phone numbers on sign-up.

Imported users

If PreventUserExistenceErrors is enabled, during authentication of imported users a generic NotAuthorizedException error is returned indicating either the username or password was incorrect instead of returning PasswordResetRequiredException. See Requiring imported users to reset their passwords for more information.

Migrate user Lambda trigger

Amazon Cognito returns a simulated response for users that don't exist when an empty response was set in the original event context by the Lambda trigger. For more information, see Migrate User Lambda Trigger.

Preventing UsernameExistsException errors for email addresses and phone numbers on sign-up

The following example demonstrates how, when you configure alias attributes in your user pool, you can keep duplicate email addresses and phone numbers from generating UsernameExistsException errors in response to SignUp API requests. You must have created your user pool with email address or phone number as an alias attribute. For more information, see the Customizing sign-in attributes section of User pool attributes.

  1. Jie signs up for a new username, and also provides the email address jie@example.com. Amazon Cognito sends a code to their email address.

    Example AWS CLI command

    aws cognito-idp sign-up --client-id 1234567890abcdef0 --username jie --password PASSWORD --user-attributes Name="email",Value="jie@example.com"

    Example response

    {
    "UserConfirmed": false, 
    "UserSub": "<subId>", 
    "CodeDeliveryDetails": {
        "AttributeName": "email", 
        "Destination": "j****@e****", 
        "DeliveryMedium": "EMAIL"
    }
}

  2. Jie provides the code sent to them to confirm their ownership of the email address. This completes their registration as a user.

    Example AWS CLI command

    aws cognito-idp confirm-sign-up --client-id 1234567890abcdef0 --username=jie --confirmation-code xxxxxx

  3. Shirley registers a new user account and provides the email address jie@example.com. Amazon Cognito doesn't return a UsernameExistsException error, and sends a confirmation code to Jie's email address.

    Example AWS CLI command

    aws cognito-idp sign-up --client-id 1234567890abcdef0 --username shirley --password PASSWORD --user-attributes Name="email",Value="jie@example.com"

    Example response

    {
    "UserConfirmed": false, 
    "UserSub": "<new subId>", 
    "CodeDeliveryDetails": {
        "AttributeName": "email", 
        "Destination": "j****@e****", 
        "DeliveryMedium": "EMAIL"
    }
}

  4. In a different scenario, Shirley has ownership of jie@example.com. Shirley retrieves the code that Amazon Cognito sent to Jie's email address and attempts to confirm the account.

    Example AWS CLI command

    aws cognito-idp confirm-sign-up --client-id 1234567890abcdef0 --username=shirley --confirmation-code xxxxxx

    Example response

    An error occurred (AliasExistsException) when calling the ConfirmSignUp operation: An account with the email already exists.

Amazon Cognito doesn't return an error to Shirley's aws cognito-idp sign-up request, despite jie@example.com being assigned to an existing user. Shirley must demonstrate ownership of the email address before Amazon Cognito returns an error response. In a user pool with alias attributes, this behavior prevents use of the public SignUp API to check whether a user exists with a given email address or phone number.

This behavior is different from the response that Amazon Cognito returns to SignUp request with an existing username, as shown in the following example. While Shirley learns from this response that a user already exists with the username jie, they don't learn about any email addresses or phone numbers associated with the user.

Example CLI command

aws cognito-idp sign-up --client-id 1example23456789 --username jie --password PASSWORD
      --user-attributes Name="email",Value="shirley@example.com"

Example response

An error occurred (UsernameExistsException) when calling the SignUp operation: User already exists

Password reset operations

Amazon Cognito returns the following responses to user password reset operations when you prevent user existence errors.

ForgotPassword

When a user isn't found, is deactivated, or doesn't have a verified delivery mechanism to recover their password, Amazon Cognito returns CodeDeliveryDetails with a simulated delivery medium for a user. The simulated delivery medium is determined by the input username format and verification settings of the user pool.

ConfirmForgotPassword

Amazon Cognito returns the CodeMismatchException error for users that don't exist or are disabled. If a code isn't requested when using ForgotPassword, Amazon Cognito returns the ExpiredCodeException error.

Confirmation operations

Amazon Cognito returns the following responses to user confirmation and verification operations when you prevent user existence errors.

ResendConfirmationCode

Amazon Cognito returns CodeDeliveryDetails for a disabled user or a user that doesn't exist. Amazon Cognito sends a confirmation code to the existing user's email or phone number.

ConfirmSignUp

ExpiredCodeException returns if a code has expired. Amazon Cognito returns NotAuthorizedException when a user isn't authorized. If the code doesn't match what the server expects Amazon Cognito returns CodeMismatchException.