AWS Presigned URLs

Presigned URLs are useful for fine-grained access control to resources on s3.

For example, if storing larger text blocks than DynamoDB might allow with its 400KB size limits s3 is a useful option.

Ignoring various ACL methods and using presigned URLs, it's possible to create lambda functions that can generate the required upload and download URLs.

Using the default IAM roles and lambda proxy configuration of serverless, lambdas are assigned an IAM role for the application (so that a logical group of functions can share resources - e.g. for a CRUD REST API). Each function then assumes the IAM role via its own function name.

It is important that both of these are given the requisite access rights to the relevant bucket in order to avoid the dreaded:

<Error>
  <Code>AccessDenied</Code>
  <Message>Access Denied</Message>
  <RequestId>A37839BB23186F72</RequestId>
  <HostId>
yvKTN+CN1TTNk2tqoxxm3MPOGTUSMaRYtbbEFeCzGP7ou5IYf37Z9uBESwUQWDIUR1GUuPbZyuM=
  </HostId>
</Error>

The potential gotcha is that presigned URL functionality requires broader actions on the bucket than initially suspected. Therefore, wildcard actions on the bucket/path/* are insufficient. Permissions must also be granted on the bucket itself.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Id": "SomeID",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "PresignedPermissions",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {
                "AWS": [
                    "arn:aws:sts::403511221862:assumed-role/serverless-app-lambdaRole/lambda-function-name",
                    "arn:aws:iam::403511221862:role/view-api-dev-us-west-2-lambdaRole"
                ]
            },
            "Action": "s3:*",
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::bucket-name",
                "arn:aws:s3:::bucket-name/*"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Note the two resources: the bucket itself and the bucket's objects.

bugb/policy.md

AWS Presigned URLs