EC2 Image Builder identity-based policies

Identity-based policy best practices

Identity-based policies determine whether someone can create, access, or delete Image Builder resources in your account. These actions can incur costs for your AWS account. When you create or edit identity-based policies, follow these guidelines and recommendations:

• Get started with AWS managed policies and move toward least-privilege permissions – To get started granting permissions to your users and workloads, use the AWS managed policies that grant permissions for many common use cases. They are available in your AWS account. We recommend that you reduce permissions further by defining AWS customer managed policies that are specific to your use cases. For more information, see AWS managed policies or AWS managed policies for job functions in the IAM User Guide.

• Apply least-privilege permissions – When you set permissions with IAM policies, grant only the permissions required to perform a task. You do this by defining the actions that can be taken on specific resources under specific conditions, also known as least-privilege permissions. For more information about using IAM to apply permissions, see Policies and permissions in IAM in the IAM User Guide.

• Use conditions in IAM policies to further restrict access – You can add a condition to your policies to limit access to actions and resources. For example, you can write a policy condition to specify that all requests must be sent using SSL. You can also use conditions to grant access to service actions if they are used through a specific AWS service, such as AWS CloudFormation. For more information, see IAM JSON policy elements: Condition in the IAM User Guide.

• Use IAM Access Analyzer to validate your IAM policies to ensure secure and functional permissions – IAM Access Analyzer validates new and existing policies so that the policies adhere to the IAM policy language (JSON) and IAM best practices. IAM Access Analyzer provides more than 100 policy checks and actionable recommendations to help you author secure and functional policies. For more information, see IAM Access Analyzer policy validation in the IAM User Guide.

• Require multi-factor authentication (MFA) – If you have a scenario that requires IAM users or a root user in your AWS account, turn on MFA for additional security. To require MFA when API operations are called, add MFA conditions to your policies. For more information, see Configuring MFA-protected API access in the IAM User Guide.

For more information about best practices in IAM, see Security best practices in IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Using the Image Builder console

To access the EC2 Image Builder console, you must have a minimum set of permissions. These permissions allow you to list and view details about the Image Builder resources in your AWS account. If you create an identity-based policy that is more restrictive than the minimum required permissions, the console won't function as intended for entities (IAM users or roles) with that policy.

To ensure that your IAM entities can use the Image Builder console, you must attach one of the following AWS managed policies to them:

• AWSImageBuilderReadOnlyAccess policy

• AWSImageBuilderFullAccess policy

For more information about Image Builder managed policies, see Using managed policies for EC2 Image Builder.

Important

The AWSImageBuilderFullAccess policy is required to create the Image Builder service-linked role. When you attach this policy to an IAM entity, you must also attach the following custom policy and include the resources you want to use that do not have imagebuilder in the resource name:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "sns:Publish"
            ],
            "Resource": "sns topic arn"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "iam:GetInstanceProfile"
            ],
            "Resource": "instance profile role arn"
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "iam:PassRole",
            "Resource": "instance profile role arn",
            "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {
                    "iam:PassedToService": "ec2.amazonaws.com"
                }
            }
        },
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "s3:ListBucket"
            ],
            "Resource": "bucket arn"
        }
    ]
}

You don't need to allow minimum console permissions for users that are making calls to only the AWS CLI or the AWS API. Instead, allow access to only the actions that match the API operation that you're trying to perform.