Configure AWS Credentials

Authenticate to AWS in GitHub Actions! Works especially well with AWS Secrets Manager.

Quick Start (OIDC, recommended)

Create an IAM Identity Provider in your AWS account for GitHub OIDC. (See OIDC configuration below for details.)

Create an IAM Role in your AWS account with a trust policy that allows GitHub Actions to assume it:

GitHub OIDC Trust Policy

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Principal": {
        "Federated": "arn:aws:iam::<AWS_ACCOUNT_ID>:oidc-provider/token.actions.githubusercontent.com"
      },
      "Action": "sts:AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity",
      "Condition": {
        "StringEquals": {
          "token.actions.githubusercontent.com:aud": "sts.amazonaws.com",
          "token.actions.githubusercontent.com:sub": "repo:<GITHUB_ORG>/<GITHUB_REPOSITORY>:ref:refs/heads/<GITHUB_BRANCH>"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

Attach permissions to the IAM Role that allow it to access the AWS resources you need.

Add the following to your GitHub Actions workflow:

Example Workflow

# Need ID token write permission to use OIDC
permissions:
  id-token: write
jobs:
  run_job_with_aws:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Configure AWS Credentials
        uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@main # Or a specific version
        with:
          role-to-assume: <Role ARN you created in step 2>
          aws-region: <AWS Region you want to use>
      - name: Additional steps
        run: |
          # Your commands that require AWS credentials
          aws sts get-caller-identity

That's it! Your GitHub Actions workflow can now access AWS resources using the IAM Role you created. Other authentication scenarios are also supported (see below).

Security Recommendations

Use temporary credentials when possible. OIDC is recommended because it provides temporary credentials and it's easy to set up.
Do not store credentials in your repository's code. Consider using git-secrets to prevent committing secrets to your repository.
Grant least privilege to your workflows. Grant only those permissions that are necessary for the workflow to run.
Monitor the activity of the credentials used in workflows.
Periodically rotate any long-lived credentials that you use.
Store sensitive information in a secure way, such as using AWS Secrets Manager or GitHub Secrets.

Other Authentication Scenarios

This action supports five different authentication methods that are configured by specifying different inputs.

Use a core.getIDToken() call to authenticate via OIDC.
Re-export existing long-lived IAM credentials (access key ID and secret access key) as environment variables.
Use static credentials stored in GitHub Secrets to fetch temporary credentials via STS AssumeRole.
Use a Web Identity Token to fetch temporary credentials via STS AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity.
Use credentials stored in the Action environment to fetch temporary credentials via STS AssumeRole.

Because we use the AWS JavaScript SDK, we always will use the credential resolution flow for Node.js. Depending on your inputs, the action might override parts of this flow.

Inputs and their effects on the credential resolution flow

Identity Used	`aws-access-key-id`	`role-to-assume`	`web-identity-token-file`	`role-chaining`
[✅ Recommended] GitHub OIDC		✔
IAM User (no AssumeRole)	✔
AssumeRole using static IAM credentials	✔	✔
AssumeWithWebIdentity use a token file		✔	✔
AssumeRole using existing credentials		✔		✔

Note: role-chaining is not always necessary to use existing credentials. If you're getting a "Credentials loaded by the SDK do not match" error, try enabling this option.

Additionally, aws-region is always required.

Note: If you use GitHub Enterprise Server, you must use the you may need to adjust examples here to match your environment.

Additional Options

Options

See action.yml for more detail.

Options list and descriptions

Option	Description	Required
aws-region	Which AWS region to use	Yes
role-to-assume	Role for which to fetch credentials. Only required for some authentication types.	No
aws-access-key-id	AWS access key to use. Only required for some authentication types.	No
aws-secret-access-key	AWS secret key to use. Only required for some authentication types.	No
aws-session-token	AWS session token to use. Used in uncommon authentication scenarios.	No
role-chaining	Use existing credentials from the environment to assume a new role.	No
audience	The JWT audience when using OIDC. Used in non-default AWS partitions, like China regions.	No
http-proxy	An HTTP proxy to use for API calls.	No
mask-aws-account-id	AWS account IDs are not considered secret. Setting this will hide account IDs from output anyway.	No
role-duration-seconds	The assumed role duration in seconds, if assuming a role. Defaults to 1 hour (3600 seconds). Acceptable values range from 15 minutes (900 seconds) to 12 hours (43200 seconds).	No
role-external-id	The external ID of the role to assume. Only needed if your role requires it.	No
role-session-name	Defaults to "GitHubActions", but may be changed if required.	No
role-skip-session-tagging	Skips session tagging if set.	No
inline-session-policy	You may further restrict the assumed role policy by defining an inline policy here.	No
managed-session-policies	You may further restrict the assumed role policy by specifying a managed policy here.	No
output-credentials	When set, outputs fetched credentials as action step output. (Outputs aws-access-key-id, aws-secret-access-key, aws-session-token, aws-account-id, authenticated-arn, and aws-expiration). Defaults to false.	No
output-env-credentials	When set, outputs fetched credentials as environment variables (AWS_REGION, AWS_DEFAULT_REGION, AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, AWS_SESSION_TOKEN). Defaults to true. Set to false if you need to avoid setting/changing env variables. You'd probably want to use output-credentials if you disable this. (NOTE: Setting to false will prevent the aws-account-id from being exported as a step output).	No
unset-current-credentials	When set, attempts to unset any existing credentials in your action runner.	No
disable-retry	Disabled retry/backoff logic for assume role calls. By default, retries are enabled.	No
retry-max-attempts	Limits the number of retry attempts before giving up. Defaults to 12.	No
special-characters-workaround	Uncommonly, some environments cannot tolerate special characters in a secret key. This option will retry fetching credentials until the secret access key does not contain special characters. This option overrides disable-retry and retry-max-attempts.	No
use-existing-credentials	When set, the action will check if existing credentials are valid and exit if they are. Defaults to false.	No

Adjust the retry mechanism

You can configure retry settings for if the STS call fails. By default, we retry with exponential backoff 12 times. You can disable this behavior altogether by setting the disable-retry input to true, or you can configure the number of times it retries with the retry-max-attempts input.

Mask account ID

Your account ID is not masked by default in workflow logs. You can set the mask-aws-account-id input to true to mask your account ID in workflow logs if desired.

Unset current credentials

Sometimes, existing credentials in your runner can get in the way of the intended outcome. You can set the unset-current-credentials input to true to work around this issue.

Use an HTTP proxy

If need use an HTTP proxy you can set it in the action manually. Additionally this action will always consider the HTTP_PROXY environment variable.

Proxy configuration

Manually configured proxy:

uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v4.3.1
with:
  aws-region: us-east-2
  role-to-assume: my-github-actions-role
  http-proxy: "http://companydomain.com:3128"

Proxy configured in the environment variable:

# Your environment configuration
HTTP_PROXY="http://companydomain.com:3128"

Special characters in AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

Some edge cases are unable to properly parse an AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY if it contains special characters. For more information, please see the AWS CLI documentation. If you set the special-characters-workaround option, this action will continually retry fetching credentials until we get one that does not have special characters. This option overrides the disable-retry and retry-max-attempts options. We recommend that you do not enable this option unless required, because retrying APIs infinitely until they succeed is not best practice.

Session Naming and Policies

The default session name is "GitHubActions", and you can modify it by specifying the desired name in role-session-name.

Note: you might find it helpful to set the role-session-name to ${{ github.run_id }} so as to clarify in audit logs which AWS actions were performed by which workflow run.

The session will be tagged with the following tags: (Refer to GitHub's documentation for GITHUB_ environment variable definitions)

Key	Value
GitHub	"Actions"
Repository	GITHUB_REPOSITORY
Workflow	GITHUB_WORKFLOW
Action	GITHUB_ACTION
Actor	GITHUB_ACTOR
Branch	GITHUB_REF
Commit	GITHUB_SHA

Note: all tag values must conform to the tag requirements. Particularly, GITHUB_WORKFLOW will be truncated if it's too long. If GITHUB_ACTOR or GITHUB_WORKFLOW contain invalid characters, the characters will be replaced with an '*'.

The action will use session tagging by default unless you are using OIDC.

Session policies

Session policies are not required, but they allow you to limit the scope of the fetched credentials without making changes to IAM roles. You can specify inline session policies right in your workflow file, or refer to an existing managed session policy by its ARN.

Inline session policies

An IAM policy in stringified JSON format that you want to use as an inline session policy. Depending on preferences, the JSON could be written on a single line.

Inline session policy examples

      uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v4.3.1
      with:
         inline-session-policy: '{"Version":"2012-10-17","Statement":[{"Sid":"Stmt1","Effect":"Allow","Action":"s3:List*","Resource":"*"}]}'

Or we can have a nicely formatted JSON as well:

      uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v4.3.1
      with:
         inline-session-policy: >-
          {
           "Version": "2012-10-17",
           "Statement": [
            {
             "Sid":"Stmt1",
             "Effect":"Allow",
             "Action":"s3:List*",
             "Resource":"*"
            }
           ]
          }

Managed session policies

The Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) of the IAM managed policies that you want to use as managed session policies. The policies must exist in the same account as the role.

Managed session policy examples

      uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v4.3.1
      with:
         managed-session-policies: arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AmazonS3ReadOnlyAccess

And we can pass multiple managed policies likes this:

      uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v4.3.1
      with:
         managed-session-policies: |
          arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AmazonS3ReadOnlyAccess
          arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AmazonS3OutpostsReadOnlyAccess

OIDC Configuration

We recommend using GitHub's OIDC provider to get short-lived AWS credentials needed for your actions. When using OIDC, you configure IAM to accept JWTs from GitHub's OIDC endpoint. This action will then create a JWT unique to the workflow run using the OIDC endpoint, and it will use the JWT to assume the specified role with short-term credentials.

To get this to work

Configure your workflow to use the id-token: write permission.
Configure your audience, if required.
In your AWS account, configure IAM to trust GitHub's OIDC identity provider.
Configure an IAM role with appropriate claim limits and permission scope.

Note: Naming your role "GitHubActions" has been reported to not work. See #953.
Specify that role's ARN when setting up this action.

OIDC Audience

When the JWT is created, an audience needs to be specified. Normally, you would use sts.amazonaws.com, and this action uses this by default if you don't specify one. This will work for most cases. Changing the default audience may be necessary when using non-default AWS partitions, such as China regions. You can specify the audience through the audience input:

    - name: Configure AWS Credentials for China region audience
      uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v4.3.1
      with:
        audience: sts.amazonaws.com.cn
        aws-region: cn-northwest-1
        role-to-assume: arn:aws-cn:iam::123456789100:role/my-github-actions-role

Configuring IAM to trust GitHub

To use GitHub's OIDC provider, you must first set up federation in your AWS account. This involves creating an IAM Identity Provider that trusts GitHub's OIDC endpoint. You can create an IAM Identity Provider in the AWS Management Console by specifying the following details:

Provider Type: OIDC
Provider URL: https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com
Audience: sts.amazonaws.com (or your custom audience if you specified one in the audience input)

Prior versions of this documentation gave instructions for specifying the certificate fingerprint, but this is no longer necessary. The thumbprint, if specified, will be ignored.

You can also create the IAM Identity Provider using the AWS CLI:

aws iam create-open-id-connect-provider \
    --url https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com \
    --client-id-list sts.amazonaws.com

Claims and scoping permissions

To align with the Amazon IAM best practice of granting least privilege, the assume role policy document should contain a Condition that specifies a subject (sub) allowed to assume the role. GitHub also recommends filtering for the correct audience (aud). See AWS IAM documentation on which claims you can filter for in your trust policies.

Without a subject (sub) condition, any GitHub user or repository could potentially assume the role. The subject can be scoped to a GitHub organization and repository as shown in the CloudFormation template. However, scoping it down to your org and repo may cause the role assumption to fail in some cases. See Example subject claims for specific details on what the subject value will be depending on your workflow. You can also customize your subject claim if you want full control over the information you can filter for in your trust policy. If you aren't sure what your subject (sub) key is, you can add the actions-oidc-debugger action to your workflow to see the value of the subject (sub) key, as well as other claims.

Additional claim conditions can be added for higher specificity as explained in the GitHub documentation. Due to implementation details, not every OIDC claim is presently supported by IAM.

Further information about OIDC

For further information on OIDC and GitHub Actions, please see:

Examples

AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity

    - name: Configure AWS Credentials
      uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v4.3.1
      with:
        aws-region: us-east-2
        role-to-assume: arn:aws:iam::123456789100:role/my-github-actions-role
        role-session-name: MySessionName

In this example, the Action will load the OIDC token from the GitHub-provided environment variable and use it to assume the role arn:aws:iam::123456789100:role/my-github-actions-role with the session name MySessionName.

AssumeRole with role previously assumed by action in same workflow

    - name: Configure AWS Credentials
      uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v4.3.1
      with:
        aws-region: us-east-2
        role-to-assume: arn:aws:iam::123456789100:role/my-github-actions-role
        role-session-name: MySessionName
    - name: Configure other AWS Credentials
      uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v4.3.1
      with:
        aws-region: us-east-2
        role-to-assume: arn:aws:iam::987654321000:role/my-second-role
        role-session-name: MySessionName
        role-chaining: true

In this two-step example, the first step will use OIDC to assume the role arn:aws:iam::123456789100:role/my-github-actions-role just as in the prior example. Following that, a second step will use this role to assume a different role, arn:aws:iam::987654321000:role/my-second-role.

AssumeRole with static IAM credentials in repository secrets

    - name: Configure AWS Credentials
      uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v4.3.1
      with:
        aws-access-key-id: ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
        aws-secret-access-key: ${{ secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}
        aws-region: us-east-2
        role-to-assume: ${{ secrets.AWS_ROLE_TO_ASSUME }}
        role-external-id: ${{ secrets.AWS_ROLE_EXTERNAL_ID }}
        role-duration-seconds: 1200
        role-session-name: MySessionName

In this example, the secret AWS_ROLE_TO_ASSUME contains a string like arn:aws:iam::123456789100:role/my-github-actions-role. To assume a role in the same account as the static credentials, you can simply specify the role name, like role-to-assume: my-github-actions-role.

Retrieving credentials from step output, AssumeRole with temporary credentials

    - name: Configure AWS Credentials 1
      id: creds
      uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v4.3.1
      with:
        aws-region: us-east-2
        role-to-assume: arn:aws:iam::123456789100:role/my-github-actions-role
        output-credentials: true
    - name: get caller identity 1
      run: |
        aws sts get-caller-identity
    - name: Configure AWS Credentials 2
      uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v4.3.1
      with:
        aws-region: us-east-2
        aws-access-key-id: ${{ steps.creds.outputs.aws-access-key-id }}
        aws-secret-access-key: ${{ steps.creds.outputs.aws-secret-access-key }}
        aws-session-token: ${{ steps.creds.outputs.aws-session-token }}
        role-to-assume: arn:aws:iam::123456789100:role/my-other-github-actions-role
    - name: get caller identity2
      run: |
        aws sts get-caller-identity

This example shows that you can reference the fetched credentials as outputs if output-credentials is set to true. This example also shows that you can use the aws-session-token input in a situation where session tokens are fetched and passed to this action.

License

This code is made available under the MIT license.

Security Disclosures

If you would like to report a potential security issue in this project, please do not create a GitHub issue. Instead, please follow the instructions here or email AWS security directly.

License

aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials

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