Using IAM Roles Anywhere to authenticate AWS SDKs and tools

You can use IAM Roles Anywhere to get temporary security credentials in IAM for workloads such as servers, containers, and applications that run outside of AWS. To use IAM Roles Anywhere, your workloads must use X.509 certificates. Your Cloud Administrator should provide the certificate and private key needed to configure IAM Roles Anywhere as your credential provider.

Step 1: Configure IAM Roles Anywhere

IAM Roles Anywhere provides a way to get temporary credentials for a workload or process that runs outside of AWS. A trust anchor is established with the certificate authority to get temporary credentials for the associated IAM role. The role sets the permissions your workload will have when your code authenticates with IAM Roles Anywhere.

For steps to set up the trust anchor, IAM role, and IAM Roles Anywhere profile, see Creating a trust anchor and profile in AWS Identity and Access Management Roles Anywhere in the IAM Roles Anywhere User Guide.

Step 2: Use IAM Roles Anywhere

To get temporary security credentials from IAM Roles Anywhere, use the credential helper tool provided by IAM Roles Anywhere. The credential tool implements the signing process for IAM Roles Anywhere.

For instructions to download the credential helper tool, see Obtaining temporary security credentials from AWS Identity and Access Management Roles Anywhere in the IAM Roles Anywhere User Guide.

To use temporary security credentials from IAM Roles Anywhere with AWS SDKs and the AWS CLI, you can configure credential_process setting in the shared AWS config file. The SDKs and AWS CLI support a process credential provider that uses credential_process to authenticate. The following shows the general structure to set credential_process.

credential_process = [path to helper tool] [command] [--parameter1 value] [--parameter2 value] [...]  

The credential-process command of the helper tool returns temporary credentials in a standard JSON format that is compatible with the credential_process setting. Note that the command name contains a hyphen but the setting name contains an underscore. The command requires the following parameters:

Your Cloud Administrator should provide the certificate and private key. All three ARN values can be copied from the AWS Management Console. The following example shows a shared config file that configures retrieving temporary credentials from the helper tool.

[profile dev]
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_ID

For optional parameters and additional helper tool details, see IAM Roles Anywhere Credential Helper on GitHub.

For details on the SDK configuration setting itself and the process credential provider, see Process credential provider in this guide.