AWS Security Blog

Enable Federated API Access to your AWS Resources for up to 12 hours Using IAM Roles

Now, your applications and federated users can complete longer running workloads in a single session by increasing the maximum session duration up to 12 hours for an IAM role. Users and applications still retrieve temporary credentials by assuming roles using AWS Security Token Service (AWS STS), but these credentials can now be valid for up to 12 hours when using the AWS SDK or CLI. This change allows your users and applications to perform longer running workloads, such as a batch upload to S3 or a CloudFormation template, using a single session. You can extend the maximum session duration using the IAM console or CLI. Once you increase the maximum session duration, users and applications assuming the IAM role can request temporary credentials that expire when the IAM role session expires.

In this post, I show you how to configure the maximum session duration for an existing IAM role to 4 hours (maximum allowed duration is 12 hours) using the IAM console. I’ll use 4 hours because AWS recommends configuring the session duration for a role to the shortest duration that your federated users would require to access your AWS resources. I’ll then show how existing federated users can use the AWS SDK or CLI to request temporary security credentials that are valid until the role session expires.

Prerequisites

In this post, I’ll use a federation example. If you have an existing identity provider, you might have enabled federation by using SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) to allow your users to access your AWS resources. This post assumes you have created an IAM role for a third-party identity provider that defines the permissions for your federated users. You could also have configured SAML-based federation for API access to AWS. For my example, I’ve chosen to configure SAML-based federation using Microsoft Active Directory Federation Service (ADFS) as the identity provider (IdP).

Configure the maximum session duration for an existing IAM role to 4 hours

Let’s assume you have an existing IAM role called ADFS-Production that allows your federated users to upload objects to an S3 bucket in your AWS account. You want to extend the maximum session duration for this role to 4 hours. By default, IAM roles in your AWS accounts have a maximum session duration of one hour. To extend a role’s maximum session duration to 4 hours, follow the steps below:

  1. Sign in to the IAM console.
  2. In the left navigation pane, select Roles and then select the role for which you want to increase the maximum session duration. For this example, I select ADFS-Production and verify the maximum session duration for this role. This value is set to 1 hour (3,600 seconds) by default.
  3. Select Edit, and then define the maximum session duration.
     
    Select Edit and define the duration

    4.  

  4. Select one of the predefined durations or provide a custom duration. For this example, I set the maximum session duration to be 4 hours.
  5. Select Save changes.

Alternatively, you can use the latest AWS CLI and call Update-Role to set the maximum session duration for the role ADFS-Production. Here’s an example to set the maximum session duration to 14,400 seconds (4 hours).

$ aws iam update-role -–role-name ADFS-Production -–max-session-duration 14400

Now that you’ve successfully extended the maximum session for your IAM role, ADFS-Production, your federated users can use AWS STS to retrieve temporary credentials that are valid for 4 hours to access your S3 buckets.

Access AWS resources with temporary security credentials using AWS CLI/SDK

To enable federated SDK and CLI access for your users who use temporary security credentials, you might have implemented the solution described in the blog post on How to Implement Federated API and CLI Access Using SAML 2.0 and AD FS. That blog post demonstrates how to use the AWS Python SDK and some additional client-side integration code provided in the post to implement federated SDK and CLI access for your users. To enable your users to request longer temporary security credentials, you can make the following changes suggested in this blog to the solution provided in that post.

When calling AssumeRoleWithSAML API to request AWS temporary security credentials, you need to include the DurationSeconds parameter. The value of this parameter is the duration the user requests and, therefore, the duration their temporary security credentials are valid. In this example, I am using boto to request the maximum length of 14,400 seconds (4 hours) using code from the How to Implement Federated API and CLI Access Using SAML 2.0 and AD FS post that I have updated:


# Use the assertion to get an AWS STS token using Assume Role with SAML
import boto3
client = boto3.client('sts')
response = client.assume_role_with_saml(
	RoleArn="arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/ADFS-Production",
	PrincipalArn="arn:aws:iam::123456789012:saml-provider/ADFS-Provider", 
	SAMLAssertion=assertion_string, 
	DurationSeconds=14400)

By adding a value for the DurationSeconds parameter in the AssumeRoleWithSAML call, your federated user can retrieve temporary security credentials that are valid for up to 14,400 seconds (4 hours). If you don’t provide this value, the default session duration is 1 hour.

Conclusion

I demonstrated how you can configure the maximum session duration for a role from 1 hour (default) up to 12 hours. Then, I showed you how your federated users can retrieve temporary security credentials that are valid for longer durations to access AWS resources using AWS CLI/SDK for up to 12 hours.

Similarly, you can also increase the maximum role session duration for your applications and users who use Web Identity or OpenID Connect Federation or Cross-Account Access with Assume Role. If you have comments about this blog, submit them in the Comments section below. If you have questions or suggestions, please start a new thread on the IAM forum.