Rennie deGraaf

AWS allows tags, arbitrary key-value pairs, to be assigned to many resources. Tags can be used to categorize resources however you like. Some examples: In an account holding multiple applications, a tag called “application” might be used to denote which application is associated with each resource. A tag called “stage”…

Amazon Web Services’ AssumeRole operation accepts an optional parameter called “sts:ExternalId” which is intended to mitigate certain types of attacks. However, both the attacks that sts:ExternalId mitigates and how to properly use it are widely misunderstood, resulting in large numbers of vulnerable AWS-based applications. This post aims to describe what…