Get temporary security credentials from IAM 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. Releases for Darwin and Windows on or after version 1.1.1 are signed.

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 Getting started.

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]
    [--role-session-name]

Options

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

$ ./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

[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 1.3.0

On November 13, 2024, AWS IAM Roles Anywhere released Credential Helper version 1.3.0. As a part of this release, TPM keys are supported for non-Windows systems, and a previously unhandled error when parsing certificate data from a file was fixed.

CredentialHelper version 1.2.1

On October 22, 2024, AWS IAM Roles Anywhere released Credential Helper version 1.2.1. As a part of this release, some security vulnerabilities were patched.

CredentialHelper version 1.2.0

On August 23, 2024, AWS IAM Roles Anywhere released Credential Helper version 1.2.0. As a part of this release, custom role session name is supported in the CreateSession request, a hop limit option is supported to limit the IP TTL on response packets for the serve command, and file updates for certificate and private key data are recognized by long-running commands and will be honored in subsequent credentialing requests.

CredentialHelper version 1.1.1

On October 12, 2023, AWS IAM Roles Anywhere released Credential Helper version 1.1.1. As a part of this release, providers in Windows are attempted to be silenced when performing signing operations. Also, Windows user certificate store names can now be explicitly provided.

CredentialHelper version 1.1.0

On September 20, 2023, AWS IAM Roles Anywhere released Credential Helper version 1.1.0. As a part of this release, PKCS#11 module integration is now supported. Also, any debug logs that previously went to stderr now go to stdout.

CredentialHelper version 1.0.6

On August 16, 2023, AWS IAM Roles Anywhere released Credential Helper version 1.0.6. As a part of this release, certificates within OS secure stores that can't be parsed are now skipped. An issue relating to mismatched regions in the ARN inputs is also now fixed.

CredentialHelper version 1.0.5

On July 25, 2023, AWS IAM Roles Anywhere released Credential Helper version 1.0.5. As a part of this release, some bugs relating to the update command were fixed. PKCS#12 containers that aren't password-protected are now supported. Lastly, MacOS Keychain Access and Windows CNG/CryptoAPI integrations are also now supported.

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.