Skip to content

AWS SPIFFE Workload Helper is a light-weight tool intended to assist in providing a workload with credentials for AWS using its SPIFFE identity.

License

Notifications You must be signed in to change notification settings

spiffe/aws-spiffe-workload-helper

Repository files navigation

AWS SPIFFE Workload Helper

Apache 2.0 License Development Phase

AWS SPIFFE Workload Helper is a light-weight tool intended to assist in providing a workload with credentials for AWS using its SPIFFE identity.

It provides a more native experience when using SPIFFE identities compared to the rolesanywhere-credential-helper released by AWS, and is intended to be used in place of rolesanywhere-credential-helper.

Currently, the helper only supports authenticating to AWS using an X.509 SVID via AWS Roles Anywhere.

Usage

Getting Started

Follow the guidance at https://docs.aws.amazon.com/rolesanywhere/latest/userguide/getting-started.html and substitute the usage of rolesanywhere-credential-helper with this utility.

Installation

Binary

The aws-spiffe-workload-helper binary is available for a range of architectures within the GitHub Releases of this repository.

Download the appropriate artifact for your architecture, and extract the .tar.gz. The binary can then be placed somewhere on the system where it will be accessible to workloads that use the AWS SDKs or CLIs. It may be beneficial to ensure it is in a location that is within your PATH.

OCI Image

The aws-spiffe-workload-helper is also distributed within an OCI image. This may be useful as a source of the binary if you are building your own image and require this binary within it.

These images are published to the GitHub Container Registry: ghcr.io/spiffe/aws-spiffe-workload-helper:latest

COPY --from=ghcr.io/spiffe/aws-spiffe-workload-helper:latest /ko-app/cmd /aws-spiffe-workload-helper

CLI Commands

x509-credential-process

The x509-credential-process command exchanges an X509 SVID for a short-lived set of AWS credentials using the AWS Roles Anywhere API. It returns the credentials to STDOUT, in the format expected by AWS SDKs and CLIs when invoking an external credential process.

The command fetches the X509-SVID from the SPIFFE Workload API. The location of the SPIFFE Workload API endpoint should be specified using the SPIFFE_ENDPOINT_SOCKET environment variable or the --workload-api-addr flag.

Example usage:

$ aws-spiffe-workload-helper x509-credential-process \
    --trust-anchor-arn arn:aws:rolesanywhere:us-east-1:123456789012:trust-anchor/0000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 \
    --profile-arn arn:aws:rolesanywhere:us-east-1:123456789012:profile/0000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 \
    --role-arn arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/example-role \
    --workload-api-addr unix:///opt/workload-api.sock
Reference
Flag Required Description Example
role-arn Yes The ARN of the role to assume. Required. arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/example-role
profile-arn Yes The ARN of the Roles Anywhere profile to use. Required. arn:aws:rolesanywhere:us-east-1:123456789012:profile/0000000-0000-0000-0000-00000000000
trust-anchor-arn Yes The ARN of the Roles Anywhere trust anchor to use. Required. arn:aws:rolesanywhere:us-east-1:123456789012:trust-anchor/0000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
region No Overrides AWS region to use when exchanging the SVID for AWS credentials. Optional. us-east-1
session-duration No The duration, in seconds, of the resulting session. Optional. Can range from 15 minutes (900) to 12 hours (43200). 3600
workload-api-addr No Overrides the address of the Workload API endpoint that will be use to fetch the X509 SVID. If unspecified, the value from the SPIFFE_ENDPOINT_SOCKET environment variable will be used. unix:///opt/my/path/workload.sock

x509-credential-file

The x509-credential-file command starts a long-lived daemon which exchanges an X509 SVID for a short-lived set of AWS credentials using the AWS Roles Anywhere API. It writes the credentials to a specified file in the format supported by AWS SDKs and CLIs as a "credential file".

It repeats this exchange process when the AWS credentials are more than 50% of the way through their lifetime, ensuring that a fresh set of credentials are always available.

Whilst the x509-credentials-process flow should be preferred as it does not cause credentials to be written to the filesystem, the x509-credentials-file flow may be useful in scenarios where you need to provide credentials to legacy SDKs or CLIs that do not support the credential_process configuration.

The command fetches the X509-SVID from the SPIFFE Workload API. The location of the SPIFFE Workload API endpoint should be specified using the SPIFFE_ENDPOINT_SOCKET environment variable or the --workload-api-addr flag.

$ aws-spiffe-workload-helper x509-credential-file \
    --trust-anchor-arn arn:aws:rolesanywhere:us-east-1:123456789012:trust-anchor/0000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 \
    --profile-arn arn:aws:rolesanywhere:us-east-1:123456789012:profile/0000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 \
    --role-arn arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/example-role \
    --workload-api-addr unix:///opt/workload-api.sock \
    --aws-credentials-path /opt/my-aws-credentials-file
Reference
Flag Required Description Example
role-arn Yes The ARN of the role to assume. Required. arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/example-role
profile-arn Yes The ARN of the Roles Anywhere profile to use. Required. arn:aws:rolesanywhere:us-east-1:123456789012:profile/0000000-0000-0000-0000-00000000000
trust-anchor-arn Yes The ARN of the Roles Anywhere trust anchor to use. Required. arn:aws:rolesanywhere:us-east-1:123456789012:trust-anchor/0000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
region No Overrides AWS region to use when exchanging the SVID for AWS credentials. Optional. us-east-1
session-duration No The duration, in seconds, of the resulting session. Optional. Can range from 15 minutes (900) to 12 hours (43200). 3600
workload-api-addr No Overrides the address of the Workload API endpoint that will be use to fetch the X509 SVID. If unspecified, the value from the SPIFFE_ENDPOINT_SOCKET environment variable will be used. unix:///opt/my/path/workload.sock
aws-credentials-path Yes The path to the AWS credentials file to write. /opt/my-aws-credentials-file
force No If set, failures loading the existing AWS credentials file will be ignored and the contents overwritten.
replace No If set, the AWS credentials file will be replaced if it exists. This will remove any profiles not written by this tool.

Configuring AWS SDKs and CLIs

To configure AWS SDKs and CLIs to use Roles Anywhere and SPIFFE for authentication, you will modify the AWS configuration file.

By default, AWS SDKs and CLIs will expect this file to be located at ~/.aws/config. This location can be customized using the AWS_CONFIG_FILE environment variable.

Example configuration:

[default]
credential_process = /usr/bin/aws-spiffe-workload-helper x509-credential-process --profile-arn arn:aws:rolesanywhere:us-east-1:123456789012:profile/0000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
--trust-anchor-arn arn:aws:rolesanywhere:us-east-1:123456789012:trust-anchor/0000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 --role-arn arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/example-role

You can learn more about external credential processes at https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-configure-sourcing-external.html

Contributing

We welcome contributions to this project. If you require any assistance, please get in contact via the SPIFFE Slack.

Governance

This is a "tiny-project".

Dispute resolution is handled via escalation to the SPIFFE Steering Committee (SSC).

About

AWS SPIFFE Workload Helper is a light-weight tool intended to assist in providing a workload with credentials for AWS using its SPIFFE identity.

Topics

Resources

License

Stars

Watchers

Forks

Packages

 
 
 

Languages