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Credential file

Leapp manages 4 types of AWS access methods:

  1. IAM Federated Role
  2. IAM User
  3. IAM Single Sign-On
  4. IAM Role chained

For each access method, Leapp generates a set of temporary credentials through STS and a rotation logic is triggered every 20 minutes.

Temporary credentials ensures that no long-term credentials are written in the AWS credentials file located in ~/.aws/credentials.

Leapp manages information entered by the user using the following logic for each access method.

IAM Federated Role

assumeRoleWithSAML

Temporary security credentials created by AssumeRoleWithSAMLResponse last for one hour. However, you can use the optional DurationSeconds parameter to specify the duration of your session.

Your role session lasts for the specified duration, or until the time specified in the SAML authentication response's SessionNotOnOrAfter value, whichever is shorter. You can provide a DurationSeconds value from 900 seconds (15 minutes) up to the maximum session duration setting for the role. This setting can have a value from 1 hour to 12 hours.

Leapp sets the token duration to 1 hour.

Info

⚠️ In this case, generated credentials are not "cached" in the keychain.

IAM Chained Role

An IAM Chained Role is used to access another AWS account services through a main session with a trust relationship.

How to use AWS Javascript SDK to Assume a Role

How to generate temporary credentials on AWS

If you do not pass the DurationSeconds parameter (as in the case of Leapp), the temporary credentials expire in 1 hour.

IAM User

The GetSessionToken operation must be called by using the long-term AWS security credentials of the AWS IAM user. Credentials that are created by IAM users are valid for the duration that you specify. This duration can range from 900 seconds (15 minutes) up to a maximum of 129,600 seconds (36 hours), with a default of 43,200 seconds (12 hours). Credentials based on account credentials can range from 900 seconds (15 minutes) up to 3,600 seconds (1 hour), with a default of 1 hour.

Leapp sets the token duration to 10 hours.

Info

These are the only temporary credentials that are stored in the System vault and not rotated, unless expired.

AWS SSO Role

How to generate SSO temporary credentials

Info

The access token is valid for 8 hours as noted in the expiresAt timestamp in the JSON file. Expired tokens must be re-authenticated using the get-role-credentials API call.

Token duration is fixed to 8 hours.