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Identity and Access Management for AWS Cloud9

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is an AWS service that helps an administrator securely control access to AWS resources. IAM administrators control who can be authenticated (signed in) and authorized (have permissions) to use AWS Cloud9 resources. IAM is an AWS service that you can use with no additional charge.

Audience

How you use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) differs based on your role:

Authenticating with identities

Authentication is how you sign in to AWS using your identity credentials. You must be authenticated as the AWS account root user, an IAM user, or by assuming an IAM role.

You can sign in as a federated identity using credentials from an identity source like AWS IAM Identity Center (IAM Identity Center), single sign-on authentication, or Google/Facebook credentials. For more information about signing in, see How to sign in to your AWS account in the AWS Sign-In User Guide.

For programmatic access, AWS provides an SDK and CLI to cryptographically sign requests. For more information, see AWS Signature Version 4 for API requests in the IAM User Guide.

AWS account root user

When you create an AWS account, you begin with one sign-in identity called the AWS account root user that has complete access to all AWS services and resources. We strongly recommend that you don't use the root user for everyday tasks. For tasks that require root user credentials, see Tasks that require root user credentials in the IAM User Guide.

Federated identity

As a best practice, require human users to use federation with an identity provider to access AWS services using temporary credentials.

A federated identity is a user from your enterprise directory, web identity provider, or Directory Service that accesses AWS services using credentials from an identity source. Federated identities assume roles that provide temporary credentials.

For centralized access management, we recommend AWS IAM Identity Center. For more information, see What is IAM Identity Center? in the AWS IAM Identity Center User Guide.

IAM users and groups

An IAM user is an identity with specific permissions for a single person or application. We recommend using temporary credentials instead of IAM users with long-term credentials. For more information, see Require human users to use federation with an identity provider to access AWS using temporary credentials in the IAM User Guide.

An IAM group specifies a collection of IAM users and makes permissions easier to manage for large sets of users. For more information, see Use cases for IAM users in the IAM User Guide.

IAM roles

An IAM role is an identity with specific permissions that provides temporary credentials. You can assume a role by switching from a user to an IAM role (console) or by calling an AWS CLI or AWS API operation. For more information, see Methods to assume a role in the IAM User Guide.

IAM roles are useful for federated user access, temporary IAM user permissions, cross-account access, cross-service access, and applications running on Amazon EC2. For more information, see Cross account resource access in IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Managing access using policies

You control access in AWS by creating policies and attaching them to AWS identities or resources. A policy defines permissions when associated with an identity or resource. AWS evaluates these policies when a principal makes a request. Most policies are stored in AWS as JSON documents. For more information about JSON policy documents, see Overview of JSON policies in the IAM User Guide.

Using policies, administrators specify who has access to what by defining which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

By default, users and roles have no permissions. An IAM administrator creates IAM policies and adds them to roles, which users can then assume. IAM policies define permissions regardless of the method used to perform the operation.

Identity-based policies

Identity-based policies are JSON permissions policy documents that you attach to an identity (user, group, or role). These policies control what actions identities can perform, on which resources, and under what conditions. To learn how to create an identity-based policy, see Define custom IAM permissions with customer managed policies in the IAM User Guide.

Identity-based policies can be inline policies (embedded directly into a single identity) or managed policies (standalone policies attached to multiple identities). To learn how to choose between managed and inline policies, see Choose between managed policies and inline policies in the IAM User Guide.

Resource-based policies

Resource-based policies are JSON policy documents that you attach to a resource. Examples include IAM role trust policies and Amazon S3 bucket policies. In services that support resource-based policies, service administrators can use them to control access to a specific resource. You must specify a principal in a resource-based policy.

Resource-based policies are inline policies that are located in that service. You can't use AWS managed policies from IAM in a resource-based policy.

Other policy types

AWS supports additional policy types that can set the maximum permissions granted by more common policy types:

Multiple policy types

When multiple types of policies apply to a request, the resulting permissions are more complicated to understand. To learn how AWS determines whether to allow a request when multiple policy types are involved, see Policy evaluation logic in the IAM User Guide.

How AWS Cloud9 works with IAM

Before you use IAM to manage access to AWS Cloud9, learn what IAM features are available to use with AWS Cloud9.

To get a high-level view of how AWS Cloud9 and other AWS services work with most IAM features, see AWS services that work with IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Identity-based policies for AWS Cloud9

Supports identity-based policies: Yes

Identity-based policies are JSON permissions policy documents that you can attach to an identity, such as an IAM user, group of users, or role. These policies control what actions users and roles can perform, on which resources, and under what conditions. To learn how to create an identity-based policy, see Define custom IAM permissions with customer managed policies in the IAM User Guide.

With IAM identity-based policies, you can specify allowed or denied actions and resources as well as the conditions under which actions are allowed or denied. To learn about all of the elements that you can use in a JSON policy, see IAM JSON policy elements reference in the IAM User Guide.

Identity-based policy examples for AWS Cloud9

To view examples of AWS Cloud9 identity-based policies, see Identity-based policy examples for AWS Cloud9.

Resource-based policies within AWS Cloud9

Supports resource-based policies: No

Resource-based policies are JSON policy documents that you attach to a resource. Examples of resource-based policies are IAM role trust policies and Amazon S3 bucket policies. In services that support resource-based policies, service administrators can use them to control access to a specific resource. For the resource where the policy is attached, the policy defines what actions a specified principal can perform on that resource and under what conditions. You must specify a principal in a resource-based policy. Principals can include accounts, users, roles, federated users, or AWS services.

To enable cross-account access, you can specify an entire account or IAM entities in another account as the principal in a resource-based policy. For more information, see Cross account resource access in IAM in the IAM User Guide.

AWS Cloud9 doesn't support resource-based policies but you can still control AWS Cloud9 environment resource permissions for AWS Cloud9 environment members via the AWS Cloud9 API and AWS Cloud9 IDE.

Policy actions for AWS Cloud9

Supports policy actions: Yes

Administrators can use AWS JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Action element of a JSON policy describes the actions that you can use to allow or deny access in a policy. Include actions in a policy to grant permissions to perform the associated operation.

To see a list of AWS Cloud9 actions, see Actions defined by AWS Cloud9 in the Service Authorization Reference.

Policy actions in AWS Cloud9 use the following prefix before the action:

account

To specify multiple actions in a single statement, separate them with commas.

"Action": [
      "account:action1",
      "account:action2"
         ]

To view examples of AWS Cloud9 identity-based policies, see Identity-based policy examples for AWS Cloud9.

Policy resources for AWS Cloud9

Supports policy resources: Yes

Administrators can use AWS JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Resource JSON policy element specifies the object or objects to which the action applies. As a best practice, specify a resource using its Amazon Resource Name (ARN). For actions that don't support resource-level permissions, use a wildcard (*) to indicate that the statement applies to all resources.

"Resource": "*"

To see a list of AWS Cloud9 resource types and their ARNs, see Resources defined by AWS Cloud9 in the Service Authorization Reference. To learn with which actions you can specify the ARN of each resource, see Actions defined by AWS Cloud9.

To view examples of AWS Cloud9 identity-based policies, see Identity-based policy examples for AWS Cloud9.

Policy condition keys for AWS Cloud9

Supports service-specific policy condition keys: Yes

Administrators can use AWS JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Condition element specifies when statements execute based on defined criteria. You can create conditional expressions that use condition operators, such as equals or less than, to match the condition in the policy with values in the request. To see all AWS global condition keys, see AWS global condition context keys in the IAM User Guide.

To see a list of AWS Cloud9 condition keys, see Condition keys for AWS Cloud9 in the Service Authorization Reference. To learn with which actions and resources you can use a condition key, see Actions defined by AWS Cloud9.

To view examples of AWS Cloud9 identity-based policies, see Identity-based policy examples for AWS Cloud9.

ACLs in AWS Cloud9

Supports ACLs: No

Access control lists (ACLs) control which principals (account members, users, or roles) have permissions to access a resource. ACLs are similar to resource-based policies, although they do not use the JSON policy document format.

ABAC with AWS Cloud9

Supports ABAC (tags in policies): Yes

Attribute-based access control (ABAC) is an authorization strategy that defines permissions based on attributes called tags. You can attach tags to IAM entities and AWS resources, then design ABAC policies to allow operations when the principal's tag matches the tag on the resource.

To control access based on tags, you provide tag information in the condition element of a policy using the aws:ResourceTag/key-name, aws:RequestTag/key-name, or aws:TagKeys condition keys.

If a service supports all three condition keys for every resource type, then the value is Yes for the service. If a service supports all three condition keys for only some resource types, then the value is Partial.

For more information about ABAC, see Define permissions with ABAC authorization in the IAM User Guide. To view a tutorial with steps for setting up ABAC, see Use attribute-based access control (ABAC) in the IAM User Guide.

Using temporary credentials with AWS Cloud9

Supports temporary credentials: Yes

Temporary credentials provide short-term access to AWS resources and are automatically created when you use federation or switch roles. AWS recommends that you dynamically generate temporary credentials instead of using long-term access keys. For more information, see Temporary security credentials in IAM and AWS services that work with IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Forward access sessions for AWS Cloud9

Supports forward access sessions (FAS): Yes

Forward access sessions (FAS) use the permissions of the principal calling an AWS service, combined with the requesting AWS service to make requests to downstream services. For policy details when making FAS requests, see Forward access sessions.

Service roles for AWS Cloud9

Supports service roles: Yes

A service role is an IAM role that a service assumes to perform actions on your behalf. An IAM administrator can create, modify, and delete a service role from within IAM. For more information, see Create a role to delegate permissions to an AWS service in the IAM User Guide.

Service-linked roles for AWS Cloud9

Supports service-linked roles: Yes

A service-linked role is a type of service role that is linked to an AWS service. The service can assume the role to perform an action on your behalf. Service-linked roles appear in your AWS account and are owned by the service. An IAM administrator can view, but not edit the permissions for service-linked roles.

For details about creating or managing service-linked roles, see AWS services that work with IAM. Find a service in the table that includes a Yes in the Service-linked role column. Choose the Yes link to view the service-linked role documentation for that service.

Identity-based policy examples for AWS Cloud9

By default, users and roles don't have permission to create or modify AWS Cloud9 resources. To grant users permission to perform actions on the resources that they need, an IAM administrator can create IAM policies.

To learn how to create an IAM identity-based policy by using these example JSON policy documents, see Create IAM policies (console) in the IAM User Guide.

For details about actions and resource types defined by AWS Cloud9, including the format of the ARNs for each of the resource types, see Actions, resources, and condition keys for AWS Cloud9 in the Service Authorization Reference.

Policy best practices

Identity-based policies determine whether someone can create, access, or delete AWS Cloud9 resources in your account. These actions can incur costs for your AWS account. When you create or edit identity-based policies, follow these guidelines and recommendations:

For more information about best practices in IAM, see Security best practices in IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Using the AWS Cloud9 console

To access the AWS Cloud9 console, you must have a minimum set of permissions. These permissions must allow you to list and view details about the AWS Cloud9 resources in your AWS account. If you create an identity-based policy that is more restrictive than the minimum required permissions, the console won't function as intended for entities (users or roles) with that policy.

You don't need to allow minimum console permissions for users that are making calls only to the AWS CLI or the AWS API. Instead, allow access to only the actions that match the API operation that they're trying to perform.

To ensure that users and roles can still use the AWS Cloud9 console, also attach the AWS Cloud9 ConsoleAccess or ReadOnly AWS managed policy to the entities. For more information, see Adding permissions to a user in the IAM User Guide.

Allow users to view their own permissions

This example shows how you might create a policy that allows IAM users to view the inline and managed policies that are attached to their user identity. This policy includes permissions to complete this action on the console or programmatically using the AWS CLI or AWS API.

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "ViewOwnUserInfo",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "iam:GetUserPolicy",
                "iam:ListGroupsForUser",
                "iam:ListAttachedUserPolicies",
                "iam:ListUserPolicies",
                "iam:GetUser"
            ],
            "Resource": ["arn:aws:iam::*:user/${aws:username}"]
        },
        {
            "Sid": "NavigateInConsole",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Action": [
                "iam:GetGroupPolicy",
                "iam:GetPolicyVersion",
                "iam:GetPolicy",
                "iam:ListAttachedGroupPolicies",
                "iam:ListGroupPolicies",
                "iam:ListPolicyVersions",
                "iam:ListPolicies",
                "iam:ListUsers"
            ],
            "Resource": "*"
        }
    ]
}

Troubleshooting AWS Cloud9 identity and access

Use the following information to help you diagnose and fix common issues that you might encounter when working with AWS Cloud9 and IAM.

I am not authorized to perform an action in AWS Cloud9

If you receive an error that you're not authorized to perform an action, your policies must be updated to allow you to perform the action.

The following example error occurs when the mateojackson IAM user tries to use the console to view details about a fictional my-example-widget resource but doesn't have the fictional awes:GetWidget permissions.

User: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/mateojackson is not authorized to perform: awes:GetWidget on resource: my-example-widget

In this case, the policy for the mateojackson user must be updated to allow access to the my-example-widget resource by using the awes:GetWidget action.

If you need help, contact your AWS administrator. Your administrator is the person who provided you with your sign-in credentials.

I am not authorized to perform iam:PassRole

If you receive an error that you're not authorized to perform the iam:PassRole action, your policies must be updated to allow you to pass a role to AWS Cloud9.

Some AWS services allow you to pass an existing role to that service instead of creating a new service role or service-linked role. To do this, you must have permissions to pass the role to the service.

The following example error occurs when an IAM user named marymajor tries to use the console to perform an action in AWS Cloud9. However, the action requires the service to have permissions that are granted by a service role. Mary does not have permissions to pass the role to the service.

User: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/marymajor is not authorized to perform: iam:PassRole

In this case, Mary's policies must be updated to allow her to perform the iam:PassRole action.

If you need help, contact your AWS administrator. Your administrator is the person who provided you with your sign-in credentials.

I want to allow people outside of my AWS account to access my AWS Cloud9 resources

You can create a role that users in other accounts or people outside of your organization can use to access your resources. You can specify who is trusted to assume the role. For services that support resource-based policies or access control lists (ACLs), you can use those policies to grant people access to your resources.

To learn more, consult the following:

How AWS Cloud9 works with IAM resources and operations

AWS Identity and Access Management is used to manage the permissions that allow you to work with both AWS Cloud9 development environments and other AWS services and resources.

AWS Cloud9 resources and operations

In AWS Cloud9, the primary resource is an AWS Cloud9 development environment. In a policy, you use an Amazon Resource Name (ARN) to identify the resource that the policy applies to. The following table lists environment ARNs. For more information, see Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) and AWS Service Namespaces in the Amazon Web Services General Reference.

For example, you can indicate a specific environment in your statement using its Amazon Resource Name (ARN), as follows.

"Resource": "arn:aws:cloud9:us-east-2:123456789012:environment:70d899206236474f9590d93b7c41dfEX"

To specify all resources, use the wildcard character (*) in the Resource element.

"Resource": "*"

To specify multiple resources in a single statement, separate their Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) with commas.

"Resource": [
  "arn:aws:cloud9:us-east-2:123456789012:environment:70d899206236474f9590d93b7c41dfEX",
  "arn:aws:cloud9:us-east-2:123456789012:environment:81e900317347585a0601e04c8d52eaEX"
]

AWS Cloud9 provides a set of operations to work with AWS Cloud9 resources. For a list, see the AWS Cloud9 permissions reference.

Understanding resource ownership

The AWS account account owns the resources that are created in the account, regardless of who created the resources.

Consider the following use cases and scenarios:

Managing access to resources

A permissions policy describes who has access to which resources.

Policies attached to an IAM identity are referred to as identity-based policies (or IAM policies). Policies attached to a resource are referred to as resource-based policies. AWS Cloud9 supports both identity-based and resource-based policies.

Each of the following API actions requires only an IAM policy to be attached to the IAM identity that wants to call these API actions:

The following API actions require a resource-based policy. An IAM policy isn't required, but AWS Cloud9 uses an IAM policy if it's attached to the IAM identity that wants to call these API actions. The resource-based policy must be applied to the desired AWS Cloud9 resource:

For more information about what each of these API actions does, see the AWS Cloud9 API Reference.

You cannot attach a resource-based policy to an AWS Cloud9 resource directly. Instead, AWS Cloud9 attaches the appropriate resource-based policies to AWS Cloud9 resources as you add, modify, update, or delete environment members.

To grant a user permissions to perform actions on AWS Cloud9 resources, you attach a permissions policy to an IAM group that the user belongs to. We recommend that you attach an AWS managed (predefined) policy for AWS Cloud9 whenever possible. AWS managed policies contain predefined sets of access permissions for common usage scenarios and user types, such as full administration of an environment, environment users, and users who have only read-only access to an environment. For a list of AWS managed policies for AWS Cloud9, see AWS managed policies for AWS Cloud9.

For more detailed usage scenarios and unique user types, you can create and attach your own customer managed policies. See Additional setup options for AWS Cloud9 and Creating customer managed policies for AWS Cloud9.

To attach an IAM policy (AWS managed or customer managed) to an IAM identity, see Attaching IAM Policies (Console) in the IAM User Guide.

Session permissions for API operations

When using the AWS CLI or AWS API to programmatically create a temporary session for a role or federated user, you can pass session policies as a parameter to extend the scope of the role session. This means that the effective permissions of the session are the intersection of the role’s identity-based policies and the session policies.

When a request is made to access a resource during a session, if there's no applicable Deny statement but also no applicable Allow statement in the session policy, the result of the policy evaluation is an implicit denial. (For more information, see Determining whether a request is allowed or denied within an account in the IAM User Guide.)

But, for AWS Cloud9 API operations that require a resource-based policy (see above), permissions are granted to the IAM entity that's calling if it's specified as the Principal in the resource policy. This explicit permission takes precedence over the implicit denial of the session policy, thereby allowing the session to call the AWS Cloud9 API operation successfully.

AWS managed policies for AWS Cloud9

An AWS managed policy is a standalone policy that is created and administered by AWS. AWS managed policies are designed to provide permissions for many common use cases so that you can start assigning permissions to users, groups, and roles.

Keep in mind that AWS managed policies might not grant least-privilege permissions for your specific use cases because they're available for all AWS customers to use. We recommend that you reduce permissions further by defining customer managed policies that are specific to your use cases.

You cannot change the permissions defined in AWS managed policies. If AWS updates the permissions defined in an AWS managed policy, the update affects all principal identities (users, groups, and roles) that the policy is attached to. AWS is most likely to update an AWS managed policy when a new AWS service is launched or new API operations become available for existing services.

For more information, see AWS managed policies in the IAM User Guide.

AWS managed policy: AWSCloud9Administrator

You can attach the AWSCloud9Administrator policy to your IAM identities.

This policy grants administrative permissions that provide administrator access to AWS Cloud9.

Permissions details

This policy includes the following permissions.

To view the permissions for this policy, see AWSCloud9Administrator in the AWS Managed Policy Reference.

AWS managed policy: AWSCloud9User

You can attach the AWSCloud9User policy to your IAM identities.

This policy grants user permissions to create AWS Cloud9 development environments and to manage owned environments.

Permissions details

This policy includes the following permissions.

To view the permissions for this policy, see AWSCloud9User in the AWS Managed Policy Reference.

AWS managed policy: AWSCloud9EnvironmentMember

You can attach the AWSCloud9EnvironmentMember policy to your IAM identities.

This policy grants membership permissions that provide the ability to join an AWS Cloud9 shared environment.

Permissions details

This policy includes the following permissions:

To view the permissions for this policy, see AWSCloud9EnvironmentMember in the AWS Managed Policy Reference.

AWS managed policy: AWSCloud9ServiceRolePolicy

The service-linked role AWSServiceRoleForAWSCloud9 uses this policy to allow the AWS Cloud9 environment interact with Amazon EC2 and CloudFormation resources.

Permissions details

The AWSCloud9ServiceRolePolicy grants the AWSServiceRoleForAWSCloud9 the necessary permissions to allow AWS Cloud9 to interact with the AWS services (Amazon EC2 and CloudFormation) that are required to create and run development environments.

AWS Cloud9 defines the permissions of its service-linked roles, and only AWS Cloud9 can assume its roles. The defined permissions include the trust policy and the permissions policy, and that permissions policy cannot be attached to any other IAM entity.

For more information on how AWS Cloud9 uses service-linked roles, see Using service-linked roles for AWS Cloud9.

To view the permissions for this policy, see AWSCloud9ServiceRolePolicy in the AWS Managed Policy Reference.

AWS Cloud9 updates to AWS managed policies

View details about updates to AWS managed policies for AWS Cloud9 since this service began tracking these changes. For automatic alerts about changes to this page, subscribe to the RSS feed on the AWS Cloud9 Document history page.

Creating customer managed policies for AWS Cloud9

If none of the AWS managed policies meet your access control requirements, you can create and attach your own customer managed policies.

To create a customer managed policy, see Create an IAM Policy (Console) in the IAM User Guide.

Specifying policy elements: effects, principals, actions, and resources

For each AWS Cloud9 resource, the service defines a set of API operations. To grant permissions for these API operations, AWS Cloud9 defines a set of actions that you can specify in a policy.

The following are the basic policy elements: