I've been converting an existing application to an EC2, S3 and RDS model within AWS, so far it's going well but I've got a problem I can't seem to find any info on.
My Web application accesses the S3 box for images and documents, the way this is stored is by client code,
Data/ClientCode1/Images
Data/ClientCode2/Images
Data/ClientABC/Images -- etc
The EC2 hosting the web application also works within a similar structure, so www.programname.com/ClientCode1/Index.aspx as an example, this has working security to prevent cross client access.
Now when www.programname.com/ClientCode1/Index.aspx goes to access the S3 for images, I need to make sure it can only access the ClientCode1 folder on the S3, the goal is to prevent client A seeing the images/documents of client B if you had a tech sort trying.
Is there perhaps a way to get the page referrer, or is there a better approach to this issue?
There is no way to use the URL or referrer to control access to Amazon S3, because that information is presented to your application (not S3).
If all your users are accessing the data in Amazon S3 via the same application, it will be the job of your application to enforce any desired security. This is because the application will be using a single set of credentials to access AWS services, so those credentials will need access to all data that the application might request.
To clarify: Amazon S3 has no idea which page a user is viewing. Only your application knows this. Therefore, your application will need to enforce the security.
I found the solution, seems to work well
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Id": "http referer policy example",
"Statement": [
{
"Sid": "Allow get requests referred by www.example.com and example.com.",
"Effect": "Allow",
"Principal": "*",
"Action": "s3:GetObject",
"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::clientdata/Clients/Client1/*",
"Condition": {
"StringLike": {"aws:Referer": ["http://www.example.com/Client1/*","http://example.com/Client1/*"]}
}
},
{
"Sid": "Explicit deny to ensure requests are allowed only from specific referer.",
"Effect": "Deny",
"Principal": "*",
"Action": "s3:*",
"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::clientdata/Clients/Client1/*",
"Condition": {
"StringNotLike": {"aws:Referer": ["http://www.example.com/Client1/*","http://example.com/Client1/*"]}
}
}
]
}
This allows you to check the referer to see if the URL is from a given path, in my case I have each client sitting in their own path, the bucket follows the same rule, in the above example only a user coming from Client1 can access the bucket data for Client1, if I log in to Client2 and try force an image to the Client1 bucket I'll get access denied.