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Configure HTTP S3 Download Demo using SigV4 Library

Following steps needs to be followed to configure HTTP S3 Download Demo to use SigV4 library for authenticating the requests sent to AWS S3.

Prerequisites​

  1. You will need an AWS Account with S3 access before beginning. You must be familiar with AWS IoT and IAM to perform steps using the AWS CLI. You must install and configure the AWS CLI in order to follow the steps.

    aws configure

Detailed Steps​

1. Create an AWS IoT thing​

You may utilize an already existing AWS IoT Thing or create a new one in the IoT Core section of the AWS Management Console UI.

You may also use the AWS CLI with the following command to create a Thing, keeping track of its name:

aws iot create-thing --thing-name device_thing_name

2. Register a certificate​

If your AWS IoT Thing already has a certificate attached to it, then that certificate's ARN can be used in step 5. Otherwise, you can create a certificate and attach it to the thing through IoT Core in the AWS Management Console UI. By doing any of these, you may skip to step 3.

It is also possible to sign the Thing's certificate using your own Certificate Authority (CA) certificate, and register both certificates with AWS IoT before your device can authenticate to AWS IoT. If you do not already have a CA certificate, you can use OpenSSL to create a CA certificate, as described in Use Your Own Certificate. To register your CA certificate with AWS IoT, follow the steps on Registering Your CA Certificate.

You then have to create a device certificate signed by the CA certificate and register it with AWS IoT, which you can do by following the steps on Creating a Device Certificate Using Your CA Certificate. Save the certificate and the corresponding key pair; you will use them when you request a security token later. Also, remember the password you provide when you create the certificate.

Run the following command in the AWS CLI to attach the device certificate to your thing so that you can use thing attributes in policy variables.

aws iot attach-thing-principal --thing-name device_thing_name --principal <certificate-arn>

3. Configure an IAM role​

Next, configure an IAM role in your AWS account that will be assumed by the credentials provider on behalf of your device. You are required to associate two policies with the role: a trust policy that controls who can assume the role, and an access policy that controls which actions can be performed on which resources by assuming the role.

The following trust policy grants the credentials provider permission to assume the role. Put it in a text document and save the document with the name, trustpolicyforiot.json.

{
   "Version": "2012-10-17",
   "Statement": {
   "Effect": "Allow",
   "Principal": {"Service": "credentials.iot.amazonaws.com"},
   "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
    }
}

Run the following command in the AWS CLI to create an IAM role with the preceding trust policy.

aws iam create-role --role-name s3-access-role --assume-role-policy-document file://trustpolicyforiot.json

The following s3 access policy allows you to perform actions on S3. Put the following policy in a text document and save the document with the name accesspolicyfors3.json. Make Sure to replace "BUCKET_NAME" with the name of the S3 bucket you are using for this demo.

{
   "Version": "2012-10-17",
   "Statement": {
   "Effect": "Allow",
   "Action": [
             "s3:GetObject"
             ],
   "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::BUCKET_NAME/*"
    }
}

Run the following command in the AWS CLI to create the access policy.

aws iam create-policy --policy-name accesspolicyfors3 --policy-document file://accesspolicyfors3.json

Finally, run the following command in the AWS CLI to attach the access policy to your role.

aws iam attach-role-policy --role-name s3-access-role --policy-arn arn:aws:iam::<your_aws_account_id>:policy/accesspolicyfors3

Configure the PassRole permissions

The IAM role that you have created must be passed to AWS IoT to create a role alias, as described in Step 4. The IAM user who performs the operation requires iam:PassRole permission to authorize this action. You also should add permission for the iam:GetRole action to allow the IAM user to retrieve information about the specified role. Create the following policy to grant iam:PassRole and iam:GetRole permissions. Name this policy passrolepermission.json.

{
           "Version": "2012-10-17",
           "Statement": {
             "Effect": "Allow",
             "Action": [
                 "iam:GetRole",
                 "iam:PassRole"
             ],
             "Resource": "arn:aws:iam::<your_aws_account_id>:role/s3-access-role"
           }
}

Run the following command in the AWS CLI to create the policy in your AWS account.

aws iam create-policy --policy-name passrolepermission --policy-document file://passrolepermission.json

Now, run the following command to attach the policy to the IAM user.

aws iam attach-user-policy --policy-arn arn:aws:iam::<your_aws_account_id>:policy/passrolepermission --user-name <user_name>

4. Create a role alias​

Now that you have configured the IAM role, you will create a role alias with AWS IoT. You must provide the following pieces of information when creating a role alias:

RoleAlias: This is the primary key of the role alias data model and hence a mandatory attribute. It is a string; the minimum length is 1 character, and the maximum length is 128 characters.

RoleArn: This is the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the IAM role you have created. This is also a mandatory attribute.

CredentialDurationSeconds: This is an optional attribute specifying the validity (in seconds) of the security token. The minimum value is 900 seconds (15 minutes), and the maximum value is 43,200 seconds (12 hours); the default value is 3,600 seconds, if not specified.

Note: The credentialDurationSeconds value must be less than or equal to the maximum session duration of the IAM role that the role alias references, otherwise the request will be rejected by the credentials provider.

Run the following command in the AWS CLI to create a role alias. Use the credentials of the user to whom you have given the iam:PassRole permission.

aws iot create-role-alias --role-alias name-s3-access-role-alias --role-arn arn:aws:iam::<your_aws_account_id>:role/s3-access-role --credential-duration-seconds 3600

5. Attach a policy​

You created and registered a certificate with AWS IoT earlier for successful authentication of your device. Now, you need to create and attach a policy to the certificate to authorize the request for the security token.

{
           "Version": "2012-10-17",
           "Statement": [
             {
               "Effect": "Allow",
               "Action": "iot:AssumeRoleWithCertificate",
               "Resource": "arn:aws:iot:<aws_region_name>:<your_aws_account_id>:rolealias/name-s3-access-role-alias"
             }
           ]
}

Run the following command in the AWS CLI to create the policy in your AWS IoT database.

aws iot create-policy --policy-name Thing_Policy_Name --policy-document file://thingpolicy.json

Use the following command to attach the policy with the certificate you registered earlier.

aws iot attach-policy --policy-name Thing_Policy_Name --target <certificate-arn>

6. Obtain the Credentials Provider Endpoint​

Run the following command in the AWS CLI to obtain your AWS account-specific endpoint for the credentials provider. See the DescribeEndpoint API documentation for further details.

aws iot describe-endpoint --endpoint-type iot:CredentialProvider

The following is sample output of the describe-endpoint command. It contains the endpointAddress.

{
   "endpointAddress": "<your_aws_account_specific_prefix>.credentials.iot.us-east-1.amazonaws.com"
}

Next, copy this endpoint to the macro below in demo_config.h.

#define democonfigIOT_CREDENTIAL_PROVIDER_ENDPOINT    "<your_aws_account_specific_prefix>.credentials.iot.us-east-1.amazonaws.com"

7. After the following the above steps, configure the below macros in demo_config.h​

#define democonfigIOT_THING_NAME                  "Name of IOT Thing that you provided in STEP 1"
#define democonfigIOT_CREDENTIAL_PROVIDER_ROLE    "Name of ROLE ALIAS that you provided in STEP 4"
#define democonfigS3_BUCKET_NAME                  "Name of Bucket that contains the object that needs to be downloaded"
#define democonfigS3_BUCKET_REGION                "Region where Bucket is located"
#define democonfigS3_OBJECT_NAME                  "Name of object that needs to be downloaded from AWS S3"