Automatically Rotating AWS Access Keys

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 12:48:33 -0400

Rotating credentials is a security best practice. This morning, I read a question about automatically rotating AWS Access Keys without having to go through the hassle of navigating the AWS console. There are some existing solutions already, but I decided to write a script since it was incredibly simple. The script could be packed up as a systemd/launchd service to continually rotate access keys in the background.

In the longer term, migrating my local workflows to aws-vault seems like a more secure solution. This would mean that credentials (even temporary session credentials) never have to be written in plaintext to disk (i.e. where AWS suggests). Any existing applications, such as Terraform, could have their credentials passed to them from aws-vault, which retrieves them from the OS’s secure keystore. There is even a rotate command included.

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Automatically Rotating AWS Access Keys