Roles Here? Roles There? Roles Anywhere: Exploring the Security of AWS IAM Roles Anywhere
1 min read
Summary
Roles Anywhere from AWS allows workloads to authenticate using X.509 digital certificates, which eliminates the need to create and manage long-term credentials in these workloads and makes cloud API operations more secure.
The service’s default configuration is relatively permissive within the context of the AWS account and region where it’s configured.
To authenticate using Roles Anywhere, you need to provide several pieces of information: the client certificate, its private key, the ARN of the trust anchor that signed the certificate, and the ARN of the IAM role.
If an attacker gains access to any of these pieces of information, there is a risk of unauthorized access — and if they obtain multiple pieces, the risk increases.
Default Roles Anywhere configurations can provide a path for attackers to elevate their privileges within an AWS account and perform malicious activities.
defenders should follow security best practices, implement least privilege, and use defense-in-depth strategies to ensure services are properly architected and monitored for configuration modifications.
Palo Alto Networks’ Cortex Cloud can help protect against these types of attacks.
