Identity and access management for Amazon CodePipeline - Amazon CodePipeline
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Identity and access management for Amazon CodePipeline

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

Audience

How you use Amazon Identity and Access Management (IAM) differs, depending on the work that you do in CodePipeline.

Service user – If you use the CodePipeline service to do your job, then your administrator provides you with the credentials and permissions that you need. As you use more CodePipeline features to do your work, you might need additional permissions. Understanding how access is managed can help you request the right permissions from your administrator. If you cannot access a feature in CodePipeline, see Troubleshooting Amazon CodePipeline identity and access.

Service administrator – If you're in charge of CodePipeline resources at your company, you probably have full access to CodePipeline. It's your job to determine which CodePipeline features and resources your service users should access. You must then submit requests to your IAM administrator to change the permissions of your service users. Review the information on this page to understand the basic concepts of IAM. To learn more about how your company can use IAM with CodePipeline, see How Amazon CodePipeline works with IAM.

IAM administrator – If you're an IAM administrator, you might want to learn details about how you can write policies to manage access to CodePipeline. To view example CodePipeline identity-based policies that you can use in IAM, see Amazon CodePipeline identity-based policy examples.

Authenticating with identities

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

If you access Amazon programmatically, Amazon provides a software development kit (SDK) and a command line interface (CLI) to cryptographically sign your requests by using your credentials. If you don't use Amazon tools, you must sign requests yourself. For more information about using the recommended method to sign requests yourself, see Signing Amazon API requests in the IAM User Guide.

Regardless of the authentication method that you use, you might be required to provide additional security information. For example, Amazon recommends that you use multi-factor authentication (MFA) to increase the security of your account. To learn more, see Using multi-factor authentication (MFA) in Amazon in the IAM User Guide.

Amazon Web Services account root user

When you create an Amazon Web Services account, you begin with one sign-in identity that has complete access to all Amazon Web Services and resources in the account. This identity is called the Amazon Web Services account root user and is accessed by signing in with the email address and password that you used to create the account. We strongly recommend that you don't use the root user for your everyday tasks. Safeguard your root user credentials and use them to perform the tasks that only the root user can perform. For the complete list of tasks that require you to sign in as the root user, see Tasks that require root user credentials in the IAM User Guide.

IAM users and groups

An IAM user is an identity within your Amazon Web Services account that has specific permissions for a single person or application. Where possible, we recommend relying on temporary credentials instead of creating IAM users who have long-term credentials such as passwords and access keys. However, if you have specific use cases that require long-term credentials with IAM users, we recommend that you rotate access keys. For more information, see Rotate access keys regularly for use cases that require long-term credentials in the IAM User Guide.

An IAM group is an identity that specifies a collection of IAM users. You can't sign in as a group. You can use groups to specify permissions for multiple users at a time. Groups make permissions easier to manage for large sets of users. For example, you could have a group named IAMAdmins and give that group permissions to administer IAM resources.

Users are different from roles. A user is uniquely associated with one person or application, but a role is intended to be assumable by anyone who needs it. Users have permanent long-term credentials, but roles provide temporary credentials. To learn more, see When to create an IAM user (instead of a role) in the IAM User Guide.

IAM roles

An IAM role is an identity within your Amazon Web Services account that has specific permissions. It is similar to an IAM user, but is not associated with a specific person. You can temporarily assume an IAM role in the Amazon Web Services Management Console by switching roles. You can assume a role by calling an Amazon CLI or Amazon API operation or by using a custom URL. For more information about methods for using roles, see Using IAM roles in the IAM User Guide.

IAM roles with temporary credentials are useful in the following situations:

  • Federated user access – To assign permissions to a federated identity, you create a role and define permissions for the role. When a federated identity authenticates, the identity is associated with the role and is granted the permissions that are defined by the role. For information about roles for federation, see Creating a role for a third-party Identity Provider in the IAM User Guide.

  • Temporary IAM user permissions – An IAM user or role can assume an IAM role to temporarily take on different permissions for a specific task.

  • Cross-account access – You can use an IAM role to allow someone (a trusted principal) in a different account to access resources in your account. Roles are the primary way to grant cross-account access. However, with some Amazon Web Services, you can attach a policy directly to a resource (instead of using a role as a proxy). To learn the difference between roles and resource-based policies for cross-account access, see How IAM roles differ from resource-based policies in the IAM User Guide.

  • Cross-service access – Some Amazon Web Services use features in other Amazon Web Services. For example, when you make a call in a service, it's common for that service to run applications in Amazon EC2 or store objects in Amazon S3. A service might do this using the calling principal's permissions, using a service role, or using a service-linked role.

    • Forward access sessions (FAS) – When you use an IAM user or role to perform actions in Amazon, you are considered a principal. When you use some services, you might perform an action that then initiates another action in a different service. FAS uses the permissions of the principal calling an Amazon Web Service, combined with the requesting Amazon Web Service to make requests to downstream services. FAS requests are only made when a service receives a request that requires interactions with other Amazon Web Services or resources to complete. In this case, you must have permissions to perform both actions. For policy details when making FAS requests, see Forward access sessions.

    • Service role – 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 Creating a role to delegate permissions to an Amazon Web Service in the IAM User Guide.

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

  • Applications running on Amazon EC2 – You can use an IAM role to manage temporary credentials for applications that are running on an EC2 instance and making Amazon CLI or Amazon API requests. This is preferable to storing access keys within the EC2 instance. To assign an Amazon role to an EC2 instance and make it available to all of its applications, you create an instance profile that is attached to the instance. An instance profile contains the role and enables programs that are running on the EC2 instance to get temporary credentials. For more information, see Using an IAM role to grant permissions to applications running on Amazon EC2 instances in the IAM User Guide.

To learn whether to use IAM roles or IAM users, see When to create an IAM role (instead of a user) in the IAM User Guide.

Managing access using policies

You control access in Amazon by creating policies and attaching them to Amazon identities or resources. A policy is an object in Amazon that, when associated with an identity or resource, defines their permissions. Amazon evaluates these policies when a principal (user, root user, or role session) makes a request. Permissions in the policies determine whether the request is allowed or denied. Most policies are stored in Amazon as JSON documents. For more information about the structure and contents of JSON policy documents, see Overview of JSON policies in the IAM User Guide.

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

By default, users and roles have no permissions. To grant users permission to perform actions on the resources that they need, an IAM administrator can create IAM policies. The administrator can then add the IAM policies to roles, and users can assume the roles.

IAM policies define permissions for an action regardless of the method that you use to perform the operation. For example, suppose that you have a policy that allows the iam:GetRole action. A user with that policy can get role information from the Amazon Web Services Management Console, the Amazon CLI, or the Amazon API.

Identity-based policies

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 Creating IAM policies in the IAM User Guide.

Identity-based policies can be further categorized as inline policies or managed policies. Inline policies are embedded directly into a single user, group, or role. Managed policies are standalone policies that you can attach to multiple users, groups, and roles in your Amazon Web Services account. Managed policies include Amazon managed policies and customer managed policies. To learn how to choose between a managed policy or an inline policy, see Choosing 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 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 Amazon Web Services.

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

Other policy types

Amazon supports additional, less-common policy types. These policy types can set the maximum permissions granted to you by the more common policy types.

  • Permissions boundaries – A permissions boundary is an advanced feature in which you set the maximum permissions that an identity-based policy can grant to an IAM entity (IAM user or role). You can set a permissions boundary for an entity. The resulting permissions are the intersection of an entity's identity-based policies and its permissions boundaries. Resource-based policies that specify the user or role in the Principal field are not limited by the permissions boundary. An explicit deny in any of these policies overrides the allow. For more information about permissions boundaries, see Permissions boundaries for IAM entities in the IAM User Guide.

  • Service control policies (SCPs) – SCPs are JSON policies that specify the maximum permissions for an organization or organizational unit (OU) in Amazon Organizations. Amazon Organizations is a service for grouping and centrally managing multiple Amazon Web Services accounts that your business owns. If you enable all features in an organization, then you can apply service control policies (SCPs) to any or all of your accounts. The SCP limits permissions for entities in member accounts, including each Amazon Web Services account root user. For more information about Organizations and SCPs, see How SCPs work in the Amazon Organizations User Guide.

  • Session policies – Session policies are advanced policies that you pass as a parameter when you programmatically create a temporary session for a role or federated user. The resulting session's permissions are the intersection of the user or role's identity-based policies and the session policies. Permissions can also come from a resource-based policy. An explicit deny in any of these policies overrides the allow. For more information, see Session policies in the IAM User Guide.

Manage the CodePipeline service role

The CodePipeline service role is configured with one or more policies that control access to the Amazon resources used by the pipeline. You might want to attach more policies to this role, edit the policy attached to the role, or configure policies for other service roles in Amazon. You might also want to attach a policy to a role when you configure cross-account access to your pipeline.

Important

Modifying a policy statement or attaching another policy to the role can prevent your pipelines from functioning. Be sure that you understand the implications before you modify the service role for CodePipeline in any way. Make sure you test your pipelines after you make any change to the service role.

Note

In the console, service roles created before September 2018 are created with the name oneClick_AWS-CodePipeline-Service_ID-Number.

Service roles created after September 2018 use the service role name format AWSCodePipelineServiceRole-Region-Pipeline_Name. For example, for a pipeline named MyFirstPipeline in eu-west-2, the console names the role and policy AWSCodePipelineServiceRole-eu-west-2-MyFirstPipeline.

Remove permissions from the CodePipeline service role

You can edit the service role statement to remove access to resources you do not use. For example, if none of your pipelines include Elastic Beanstalk, you can edit the policy statement to remove the section that grants access to Elastic Beanstalk resources.

Similarly, if none of your pipelines includes CodeDeploy, you can edit the policy statement to remove the section that grants access to CodeDeploy resources:

{ "Action": [ "codedeploy:CreateDeployment", "codedeploy:GetApplicationRevision", "codedeploy:GetDeployment", "codedeploy:GetDeploymentConfig", "codedeploy:RegisterApplicationRevision" ], "Resource": "*", "Effect": "Allow" },

Add permissions to the CodePipeline service role

You must update your service role policy statement with permissions for an Amazon Web Service not already included in the default service role policy statement before you can use it in your pipelines.

This is especially important if the service role you use for your pipelines was created before support was added to CodePipeline for an Amazon Web Service.

The following table shows when support was added for other Amazon Web Services.

Amazon Web Service CodePipeline support date
Amazon CloudFormation StackSets actions December 30, 2020
CodeCommit full clone output artifact format November 11, 2020
CodeBuild batch builds July 30, 2020
Amazon AppConfig June 22, 2020
Amazon Step Functions May 27, 2020
AWS CodeStar Connections December 18, 2019
The CodeDeployToECS action November 27, 2018
Amazon ECR November 27, 2018
Service Catalog October 16, 2018
Amazon Device Farm July 19, 2018
Amazon ECS December 12, 2017 / Update for opt in for tagging authorization on July 21, 2017
CodeCommit April 18, 2016
Amazon OpsWorks June 2, 2016
Amazon CloudFormation November 3, 2016
Amazon CodeBuild December 1, 2016
Elastic Beanstalk Initial service launch

Follow these steps to add permissions for a supported service:

  1. Sign in to the Amazon Web Services Management Console and open the IAM console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/iam/.

  2. In the IAM console, in the navigation pane, choose Roles, and then choose your AWS-CodePipeline-Service role from the list of roles.

  3. On the Permissions tab, in Inline policies, in the row for your service role policy, choose Edit Policy.

  4. Add the required permissions in the Policy document box.

    Note

    When you create IAM policies, follow the standard security advice of granting least privilege—that is, granting only the permissions required to perform a task. Some API calls support resource-based permissions and allow access to be limited. For example, in this case, to limit permissions when calling DescribeTasks and ListTasks, you can replace the wildcard character (*) with a resource ARN or with a resource ARN that contains a wildcard character (*). For more information about creating a policy that grants least-privilege access, see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/best-practices.html#grant-least-privilege.

    For example, for CodeCommit support, add the following to your policy statement:

    { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "codecommit:GetBranch", "codecommit:GetCommit", "codecommit:UploadArchive", "codecommit:GetUploadArchiveStatus", "codecommit:CancelUploadArchive" ], "Resource": "resource_ARN" },

    For Amazon OpsWorks support, add the following to your policy statement:

    { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "opsworks:CreateDeployment", "opsworks:DescribeApps", "opsworks:DescribeCommands", "opsworks:DescribeDeployments", "opsworks:DescribeInstances", "opsworks:DescribeStacks", "opsworks:UpdateApp", "opsworks:UpdateStack" ], "Resource": "resource_ARN" },

    For Amazon CloudFormation support, add the following to your policy statement:

    { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "cloudformation:CreateStack", "cloudformation:DeleteStack", "cloudformation:DescribeStackEvents", "cloudformation:DescribeStacks", "cloudformation:UpdateStack", "cloudformation:CreateChangeSet", "cloudformation:DeleteChangeSet", "cloudformation:DescribeChangeSet", "cloudformation:ExecuteChangeSet", "cloudformation:SetStackPolicy", "cloudformation:ValidateTemplate", "iam:PassRole" ], "Resource": "resource_ARN" },

    Note that the cloudformation:DescribeStackEvents permission is optional. It allows the Amazon CloudFormation action to show a more detailed error message. This permission can be revoked from the IAM role if you don't want resource details surfaced in the pipeline error messages. For more information, see Amazon CloudFormation.

    For CodeBuild support, add the following to your policy statement:

    { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "codebuild:BatchGetBuilds", "codebuild:StartBuild" ], "Resource": "resource_ARN" },
    Note

    Support for batch builds was added at a later date. See step 11 for the permissions to add to the service role for batch builds.

    For Amazon Device Farm support, add the following to your policy statement:

    { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "devicefarm:ListProjects", "devicefarm:ListDevicePools", "devicefarm:GetRun", "devicefarm:GetUpload", "devicefarm:CreateUpload", "devicefarm:ScheduleRun" ], "Resource": "resource_ARN" },

    For Service Catalog support, add the following to your policy statement:

    { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "servicecatalog:ListProvisioningArtifacts", "servicecatalog:CreateProvisioningArtifact", "servicecatalog:DescribeProvisioningArtifact", "servicecatalog:DeleteProvisioningArtifact", "servicecatalog:UpdateProduct" ], "Resource": "resource_ARN" }, { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "cloudformation:ValidateTemplate" ], "Resource": "resource_ARN" }
  5. For Amazon ECR support, add the following to your policy statement:

    { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "ecr:DescribeImages" ], "Resource": "resource_ARN" },
  6. For Amazon ECS, the following are the minimum permissions needed to create pipelines with an Amazon ECS deploy action.

    { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "ecs:DescribeServices", "ecs:DescribeTaskDefinition", "ecs:DescribeTasks", "ecs:ListTasks", "ecs:RegisterTaskDefinition", "ecs:TagResource", "ecs:UpdateService" ], "Resource": "resource_ARN" },

    You can opt in to using tagging authorization in Amazon ECS. By opting in, you must grant the following permissions: ecs:TagResource. For more information about how to opt in and to determine whether the permission is required and tag authorization is enforced, see Tagging authorization timeline in the Amazon Elastic Container Service Developer Guide.

    You must also add the iam:PassRole permissions to use IAM roles for tasks. For more information, see Amazon ECS task execution IAM role and IAM Roles for Tasks. Use the following policy text.

    { "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": "iam:PassRole", "Resource": [ "arn:aws:iam::aws_account_ID:role/ecsTaskExecutionRole_or_TaskRole_name" ] } ] }
  7. For the CodeDeployToECS action (blue/green deployments), the following are the minimum permissions needed to create pipelines with a CodeDeploy to Amazon ECS blue/green deployment action.

    { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "codedeploy:CreateDeployment", "codedeploy:GetDeployment", "codedeploy:GetApplication", "codedeploy:GetApplicationRevision", "codedeploy:RegisterApplicationRevision", "codedeploy:GetDeploymentConfig", "ecs:RegisterTaskDefinition", "ecs:TagResource" ], "Resource": "resource_ARN" },

    You can opt in to using tagging authorization in Amazon ECS. By opting in, you must grant the following permissions: ecs:TagResource. For more information about how to opt in and to determine whether the permission is required and tag authorization is enforced, see Tagging authorization timeline in the Amazon Elastic Container Service Developer Guide.

    You must also add the iam:PassRole permissions to use IAM roles for tasks. For more information, see Amazon ECS task execution IAM role and IAM Roles for Tasks. Use the following policy text.

    { "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": "iam:PassRole", "Resource": [ "arn:aws:iam::aws_account_ID:role/ecsTaskExecutionRole_or_TaskRole_name" ] } ] }

    You can also add ecs-tasks.amazonaws.com to the list of services under the iam:PassedToService condition, as shown in this example.

    { "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "iam:PassRole" ], "Resource": "resource_ARN", "Condition": { "StringEqualsIfExists": { "iam:PassedToService": [ "cloudformation.amazonaws.com", "elasticbeanstalk.amazonaws.com", "ec2.amazonaws.com", "ecs-tasks.amazonaws.com" ] } } },
  8. For AWS CodeStar connections, the following permission is required to create pipelines with a source that uses a connection, such as Bitbucket Cloud.

    { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "codestar-connections:UseConnection" ], "Resource": "resource_ARN" },

    For more information about the IAM permissions for connections, see Connections permissions reference.

  9. For the StepFunctions action, the following are the minimum permissions needed to create pipelines with a Step Functions invoke action.

    { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "states:DescribeStateMachine", "states:DescribeExecution", "states:StartExecution" ], "Resource": "resource_ARN" },
  10. For the AppConfig action, the following are the minimum permissions needed to create pipelines with an Amazon AppConfig invoke action.

    { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "appconfig:StartDeployment", "appconfig:GetDeployment", "appconfig:StopDeployment" ], "Resource": "resource_ARN" },
  11. For CodeBuild support for batch builds, add the following to your policy statement:

    { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "codebuild:BatchGetBuildBatches", "codebuild:StartBuildBatch" ], "Resource": "resource_ARN" },
  12. For Amazon CloudFormation StackSets actions, the following minimum permissions are required.

    • For the CloudFormationStackSet action, add the following to your policy statement:

      { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "cloudformation:CreateStackSet", "cloudformation:UpdateStackSet", "cloudformation:CreateStackInstances", "cloudformation:DescribeStackSetOperation", "cloudformation:DescribeStackSet", "cloudformation:ListStackInstances" ], "Resource": "resource_ARN" },
    • For the CloudFormationStackInstances action, add the following to your policy statement:

      { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "cloudformation:CreateStackInstances", "cloudformation:DescribeStackSetOperation" ], "Resource": "resource_ARN" },
  13. For CodeCommit support for the full clone option, add the following to your policy statement:

    { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "codecommit:GetRepository" ], "Resource": "resource_ARN" },
    Note

    To make sure your CodeBuild action can use the full clone option with a CodeCommit source, you must also add the codecommit:GitPull permission to the policy statement for your project's CodeBuild service role.

  14. For Elastic Beanstalk, the following are the minimum permissions needed to create pipelines with an ElasticBeanstalk deploy action.

    { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "elasticbeanstalk:*", "ec2:*", "elasticloadbalancing:*", "autoscaling:*", "cloudwatch:*", "s3:*", "sns:*", "cloudformation:*", "rds:*", "sqs:*", "ecs:*" ], "Resource": "resource_ARN" },
    Note

    You should replace wildcards in the resource policy with the resources for the account you want to limit access to. For more information about creating a policy that grants least-privilege access, see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/best-practices.html#grant-least-privilege.

  15. For a pipeline that you want to configure for CloudWatch Logs, the following are the minimum permissions that you need to add to the CodePipeline service role.

    { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": [ "logs:DescribeLogGroups", "logs:PutRetentionPolicy" ], "Resource": "resource_ARN" },
    Note

    You should replace wildcards in the resource policy with the resources for the account you want to limit access to. For more information about creating a policy that grants least-privilege access, see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/best-practices.html#grant-least-privilege.

  16. Choose Review policy to ensure the policy contains no errors. When the policy is error-free, choose Apply policy.