Obtaining temporary security credentials from AWS Identity and Access Management Roles Anywhere

To obtain temporary security credentials from AWS Identity and Access Management Roles Anywhere, use the credential helper tool that IAM Roles Anywhere provides. This tool is compatible with the credential_process feature available across the language SDKs. The helper manages the process of creating a signature with the certificate and calling the endpoint to obtain session credentials; it returns the credentials to the calling process in a standard JSON format. See Temporary security credentials in IAM for more information on session credentials.

To download the credential helper tool, use the following links.

Platform	Download URL	SHA256 checksum
Linux	https://rolesanywhere.amazonaws.com/releases/1.0.4/X86_64/Linux/aws_signing_helper	bc625c319d96f71c05d899eab04402dc63a455656d46e513b1ea6089b65110ce
Windows	https://rolesanywhere.amazonaws.com/releases/1.0.4/X86_64/Windows/aws_signing_helper.exe	b5363e902b938a5fca5e627d1be51df6568db375c3f59281ded0a71557e021ba
Darwin	https://rolesanywhere.amazonaws.com/releases/1.0.4/X86_64/Darwin/aws_signing_helper	41ea27f8db1603e93d092f6249cacc1256eea37e1ca4f799dd5f2916c19c30b3

Before you can obtain temporary credentials, you must have both an end-entity certificate from the certificate authority and a trust anchor in IAM Roles Anywhere. For more information, see Creating a trust anchor and profile.

Synopsis

./aws_signing_helper credential-process \
    --certificate
    [--endpoint]
    [--region]
    [--intermediates]
    --private-key
    --profile-arn
    --role-arn
    [--session-duration]
    --trust-anchor-arn
    [--with-proxy]
    [--no-verify-ssl]

Options

--certificate (string)

Path to certificate file

--endpoint (string)

The IAM Roles Anywhere endpoint for the region. For a list of endpoints, see Service endpoints and quotas.

--region (string)

Signing region.

--intermediates (string)

Path to intermediate certificate bundle.

--private-key (string)

Path to private key file.

--profile-arn (string)

Profile to pull policies from.

--role-arn (string)

Target role to assume.

--session-duration (int)

Duration, in seconds, for the resulting session (default 3600).

--trust-anchor-arn (string)

Trust anchor to to use for authentication.

--with-proxy

To use the tool with a proxy. This is a boolean flag. Note that you will have to set the HTTPS_PROXY environment variable with the address of the proxy server.

--no-verify-ssl

To disable SSL verification. This is a boolean flag.

Important

Note that this disables TLS host authentication, and can open the connection to man-in-the-middle attacks. This option should only be used under specific, tightly controlled scenarios, such as debugging proxy connections.

Output

The credential helper tool will return a JSON containing the credentials. This format allows the credentials to be consumed by the external credential process supported by the credential_process.

                {
                    "Version":1,
                    "AccessKeyId": String,
                    "SecretAccessKey": String,
                    "SessionToken": String,
                    "Expiration": Timestamp
                } 
            

Examples

Example Obtain temporary security credentials

To obtain temporary security credentials, use the following command.

$ ./aws_signing_helper credential-process \
      --certificate /path/to/certificate \
      --private-key /path/to/private-key \
      --trust-anchor-arn arn:aws:rolesanywhere:region:account:trust-anchor/TA_ID \
      --profile-arn arn:aws:rolesanywhere:region:account:profile/PROFILE_ID \
      --role-arn arn:aws:iam::account:role/role-name-with-path

Example Use temporary security credentials with AWS SDKs and the AWS CLI

To use temporary security credentials with AWS SDKs and the AWS CLI, you can configure the credential helper tool as a credential process. For more information, see Sourcing credentials with an external process.

The following example shows a the config file that sets the helper tool as the credential process.

[profile developer]
    credential_process = ./aws_signing_helper credential-process --certificate /path/to/certificate --private-key /path/to/private-key --trust-anchor-arn arn:aws:rolesanywhere:region:account:trust-anchor/TA_ID --profile-arn arn:aws:rolesanywhere:region:account:profile/PROFILE_ID --role-arn arn:aws:iam::account:role/role-name-with-path

Credential Helper on GitHub

The source code for the credential helper is available on GitHub so that you can adapt the helper to your needs. We encourage you to submit pull requests for changes that you would like to have included. However, AWS doesn't provide support for running modified copies of this software.

Credential Helper Changelog

CredentialHelper version 1.0.4

On January 17, 2023, AWS IAM Roles Anywhere released Credential Helper version 1.0.4. As a part of this release, some bugs specific to the serve command were fixed.

CredentialHelper version 1.0.3

On December 5, 2022, AWS IAM Roles Anywhere released Credential Helper version 1.0.3. As a part of this release, the tool now supports the update and serve commands.

CredentialHelper version 1.0.2

On September 8, 2022, AWS IAM Roles Anywhere released Credential Helper version 1.0.2. As a part of this release, the tool now sets the minimum TLS version to 1.2.

CredentialHelper version 1.0.1

On July 14, 2022, AWS IAM Roles Anywhere released Credential Helper version 1.0.1. As a part of this release, the tool now has better error handling.