AWS X-Ray identity-based policy examples

By default, users and roles don't have permission to create or modify X-Ray resources. They also can't perform tasks using the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or AWS API. An administrator must create IAM policies that grant users and roles permission to perform specific API operations on the specified resources they need. The administrator must then attach those policies to the users or groups that require those permissions.

To learn how to create an IAM identity-based policy using these example JSON policy documents, see Creating Policies on the JSON Tab in the IAM User Guide.

Policy best practices

Identity-based policies determine whether someone can create, access, or delete X-Ray 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:

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

Using the X-Ray console

To access the AWS X-Ray console, you must have a minimum set of permissions. These permissions must allow you to list and view details about the X-Ray 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 (users or roles) with that policy.

To ensure that those entities can still use the X-Ray console, attach the AWSXRayReadOnlyAccess AWS managed policy to the entities. This policy is described in more detail in IAM managed policies for X-Ray. For more information, see Adding Permissions to a User in the IAM User Guide.

You don't need to allow minimum console permissions for users that are making calls only to 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.

Allow users to view their own permissions

This example shows how you might create a policy that allows IAM users to view the inline and managed policies that are attached to their user identity. This policy includes permissions to complete this action on the console or programmatically using the AWS CLI or AWS API.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "ViewOwnUserInfo",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "iam:GetUserPolicy",
                "iam:ListGroupsForUser",
                "iam:ListAttachedUserPolicies",
                "iam:ListUserPolicies",
                "iam:GetUser"
            ],
            "Resource": ["arn:aws:iam::*:user/${aws:username}"]
        },
        {
            "Sid": "NavigateInConsole",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "iam:GetGroupPolicy",
                "iam:GetPolicyVersion",
                "iam:GetPolicy",
                "iam:ListAttachedGroupPolicies",
                "iam:ListGroupPolicies",
                "iam:ListPolicyVersions",
                "iam:ListPolicies",
                "iam:ListUsers"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}

Managing access to X-Ray groups and sampling rules based on tags

You can use conditions in your identity-based policy to control access to X-Ray groups and sampling rules based on tags. The following example policy could be used to deny a user role the permissions to create, delete, or update groups with the tags stage:prod or stage:preprod. For more information about tagging X-Ray sampling rules and groups, see Tagging X-Ray sampling rules and groups.

To deny a user access to create, update, or delete a group with a tag stage:prod or stage:preprod, assign the user a role with a policy similar to the following.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "AllowAllXRay",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "xray:*",
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Sid": "DenyCreateGroupWithStage",
            "Effect": "Deny",
            "Action": [
                "xray:CreateGroup"
            ],
            "Resource": "*",
            "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {
                    "aws:RequestTag/stage": [
                        "preprod",
                        "prod"
                    ]
                }
            }
        },
        {
            "Sid": "DenyUpdateGroupWithStage",
            "Effect": "Deny",
            "Action": [
                "xray:UpdateGroup",
                "xray:DeleteGroup"
            ],
            "Resource": "*",
            "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {
                    "aws:ResourceTag/stage": [
                        "preprod",
                        "prod"
                    ]
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

To deny the creation of a sampling rule, use aws:RequestTag to indicate tags that cannot be passed as part of a creation request. To deny the update or deletion of a sampling rule, use aws:ResourceTag to deny actions based on the tags on those resources.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "AllowAllXRay",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "xray:*",
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Sid": "DenyCreateSamplingRuleWithStage",
            "Effect": "Deny",
            "Action": "xray:CreateSamplingRule",
            "Resource": "*",
            "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {
                    "aws:RequestTag/stage": [
                        "preprod",
                        "prod"
                    ]
                }
            }
        },
        {
            "Sid": "DenyUpdateSamplingRuleWithStage",
            "Effect": "Deny",
            "Action": [
                "xray:UpdateSamplingRule",
                "xray:DeleteSamplingRule"
            ],
            "Resource": "*",
            "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {
                    "aws:ResourceTag/stage": [
                        "preprod",
                        "prod"
                    ]
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

You can attach these policies (or combine them into a single policy, then attach the policy) to the users in your account. For the user to make changes to a group or sampling rule, the group or sampling rule must not be tagged stage=prepod or stage=prod. The condition tag key Stage matches both Stage and stage because condition key names are not case-sensitive. For more information about the condition block, see IAM JSON Policy Elements: Condition in the IAM User Guide.

A user with a role that has the following policy attached cannot add the tag role:admin to resources, and cannot remove tags from a resource that has role:admin associated with it.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "AllowAllXRay",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": "xray:*",
            "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
            "Sid": "DenyRequestTagAdmin",
            "Effect": "Deny",
            "Action": "xray:TagResource",
            "Resource": "*",
            "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {
                    "aws:RequestTag/role": "admin"
                }
            }
        },
        {
            "Sid": "DenyResourceTagAdmin",
            "Effect": "Deny",
            "Action": "xray:UntagResource",
            "Resource": "*",
            "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {
                    "aws:ResourceTag/role": "admin"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

IAM managed policies for X-Ray

To make granting permissions easy, IAM supports managed policies for each service. A service can update these managed policies with new permissions when it releases new APIs. AWS X-Ray provides managed policies for read only, write only, and administrator use cases.

X-Ray updates to AWS managed policies

View details about updates to AWS managed policies for X-Ray since this service began tracking these changes. For automatic alerts about changes to this page, subscribe to the RSS feed on the X-Ray Document history page.

Specifying a resource within an IAM policy

You can control access to resources by using an IAM policy. For actions that support resource-level permissions, you use an Amazon Resource Name (ARN) to identify the resource that the policy applies to.

All X-Ray actions can be used in an IAM policy to grant or deny users permission to use that action. However, not all X-Ray actions support resource-level permissions, which enable you to specify the resources on which an action can be performed.

For actions that don't support resource-level permissions, you must use "*" as the resource.

The following X-Ray actions support resource-level permissions:

The following is an example of an identity-based permissions policy for a CreateGroup action. The example shows the use of an ARN relating to Group name local-users with the unique ID as a wildcard. The unique ID is generated when the group is created, and so it can't be predicted in the policy in advance. When using GetGroup, UpdateGroup, or DeleteGroup, you can define this as either a wildcard or the exact ARN, including ID.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "xray:CreateGroup"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:xray:eu-west-1:123456789012:group/local-users/*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

The following is an example of an identity-based permissions policy for a CreateSamplingRule action.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "xray:CreateSamplingRule"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:xray:eu-west-1:123456789012:sampling-rule/base-scorekeep"
            ]
        }
    ]
}