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AWS VAULT

AWS Vault is a tool to securely store and access AWS credentials in a development environment by creating temp credentials based on the profiles setup in your AWS CLI profiles file in ~/.aws/profiles. For macOS, AWS Vault uses the macOS keychain to store temporary credentials. Running assume role commands via AWS Vault can therefore sometimes request for your keychain password.

The temporary credentials that are created (which AWS vault does by using AWS cli STS assumerole commands) are only kept for a short period of time (1 hour), after which it will request new temporary creds when running aws-vault exec.

Install

There are various methods of installation as documented on their git repo: https://github.com/99designs/aws-vault My preference was to install directly using Homebrew on macOS: brew install aws-vault

AWS profile

This is an example, similar to what my ~/.aws/config looks like that relies on MFA auth based on a default profile and various role assumptions:

[default]
region = us-east-1
output = json
mfa_serial = arn:aws:iam::000000000000:mfa/adeeb@beautiful.com

[profile beautiful-data-platforms-prod]
role_arn = arn:aws:iam::123456789123:role/Developer
source_profile = default
region = us-east-1
mfa_serial = arn:aws:iam::000000000000:mfa/adeeb@beautiful.com
role_session_name = ProdDataPlatformDevSession

[profile beautiful-data-platforms-uat]
role_arn = arn:aws:iam::234567891234:role/Developer
source_profile = default
region = us-west-2
mfa_serial = arn:aws:iam::000000000000:mfa/adeeb@beautiful.com

[profile beautiful-data-platforms-test]
role_arn = arn:aws:iam::345678912345:role/Developer
source_profile = default
region = ap-southeast-2
mfa_serial = arn:aws:iam::000000000000:mfa/adeeb@beautiful.com

[profile beautiful-bi-uat]
role_arn = arn:aws:iam::567891234567:role/Developer
source_profile = default
region = ap-southeast-2
mfa_serial = arn:aws:iam::000000000000:mfa/adeeb@beautiful.com

[profile beautiful-some-account-prod]
role_arn = arn:aws:iam::678912345678:role/Developer
source_profile = default
region = us-east-1
mfa_serial = arn:aws:iam::000000000000:mfa/adeeb@beautiful.com

[profile beautiful-some-account-uat]
role_arn = arn:aws:iam::789123456789:role/Developer
source_profile = default
region = us-west-2
mfa_serial = arn:aws:iam::000000000000:mfa/adeeb@beautiful.com

[profile beautiful-some-account-test]
role_arn = arn:aws:iam::891234567891:role/Developer
source_profile = default
region = ap-southeast-2
mfa_serial = arn:aws:iam::000000000000:mfa/adeeb@beautiful.com

Assuming Role

Using the example AWS config from the previous section, I can assume any of those roles based on the profile name, e.g.:

aws-vault exec beautiful-data-platforms-test

Once the temporary credentials expire, it is worth unsetting the environment variable AWS_VAULT with

unset AWS_VAULT

before running aws-vault exec ... again. Alternatively you can always set up aliases to shorten some of these commands or combine them.

Adding more profiles/accounts

You can do this directly by editing the ~/.aws/config OR you can use the built in aws-vault command:

aws-vault add <profile>

Quality of life aliases

Short aws-vault exec

Shortening the overall aws-vault exec command with the following alias:

alias ae="aws-vault exec" >> .bashrc

Usage:

ae beautiful-data-platforms-test

Run AWS CLI command as a profile

You can run AWS cli commands AS a particular role. This can be added to bash scripts, Make files etc.

aws-vault exec <profile> -- aws s3 ls

View list of creds in your credentials vault

You can run the following command to see a list of AWS profiles/accounts and credentials added to your keychain/vault: aws-vault list