Access Keys Will Kill You Before You Kill the Password

Access Keys Will Kill You Before You Kill the Password

AWS users, whether they are devops in a startup or system administrators tasked with migrating an enterprise service into the cloud, interact on a daily basis with the AWS APIs, using either the web console or tools such as the AWS CLI to manage their infrastructure. When working with the latter, authentication is done using long-lived access keys that are often stored in plaintext files, shared between developers, and sometimes publicly exposed. This creates a significant security risk as possession of such credentials provides unconditional and permanent access to the AWS API, which may yield catastrophic events in case of credentials compromise. This talk will detail how MFA may be consistently required for all users, regardless of the authentication method. Furthermore, this talk will introduce several open- source tools, including the release of one new tool, that may be used to allow painless work when MFA-protected API access is enforced in an AWS account.

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