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# Access Keys

Access Keys is a key & secret required to have programmatic access to AWS resources when interacting with the AWS API outside of the AWS Management Console

An Access Key is commonly referred to as AWS Credentials

A user must be granted access to use Access Keys

Notes

  • Never share your access keys
  • Never commmit access keys to a codebase
  • You can have 2 active Access keys
  • You can deactivate Access keys
  • Access keys have whatever access a user has to AWS resources

# Stored path

Access Keys are to be store in ~/.aws/credentials and follow a TOML file format

[default]
aws_access_key_id=AKIAI0SFODNN7EXAMPLE 
aws_secret_access_key=wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY 
[exampro]
aws_access_key_id=AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE
aws_secret_access_key=wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY 
region=ca-central-1
  • Default will be the access key used when no profile is specified.
  • You can store multiple access keys by giving the profile names.
  • You can use the aws configure CLI command to populate the credential file.
aws configure

AWS Access Key ID [None]: AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE
AWS Secret Access Key [None]: walrUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPXRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY
Default region name [None]: us-west-2
Default output format [None]: json

# Env Var

The AWS SDK will automatically read from these environment variables.

This is the safe way of using an Access Key within your code.

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE 
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=wJalrUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY
export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-west-2

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