How Amazon MQ works with IAM - Amazon MQ
Amazon MQ identity-based policiesAmazon MQ Resource-based policiesAuthorization based on Amazon MQ tagsAmazon MQ IAM roles
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How Amazon MQ works with IAM

Before you use IAM to manage access to Amazon MQ, you should understand what IAM features are available to use with Amazon MQ. To get a high-level view of how Amazon MQ and other Amazon services work with IAM, see Amazon Services That Work with IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Amazon MQ uses IAM for creating, updating, and deleting operations, but native ActiveMQ authentication for brokers. For more information, see Integrating ActiveMQ brokers with LDAP.

Amazon MQ identity-based policies

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. Amazon MQ supports specific actions, resources, and condition keys. To learn about all of the elements that you use in a JSON policy, see IAM JSON Policy Elements Reference in the IAM User Guide.

Actions

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.

The Action element of a JSON policy describes the actions that you can use to allow or deny access in a policy. Policy actions usually have the same name as the associated Amazon API operation. There are some exceptions, such as permission-only actions that don't have a matching API operation. There are also some operations that require multiple actions in a policy. These additional actions are called dependent actions.

Include actions in a policy to grant permissions to perform the associated operation.

Policy actions in Amazon MQ use the following prefix before the action: mq:. For example, to grant someone permission to run an Amazon MQ instance with the Amazon MQ CreateBroker API operation, you include the mq:CreateBroker action in their policy. Policy statements must include either an Action or NotAction element. Amazon MQ defines its own set of actions that describe tasks that you can perform with this service.

To specify multiple actions in a single statement, separate them with commas as follows:

"Action": [
      "mq:action1",
      "mq:action2"

You can specify multiple actions using wildcards (*). For example, to specify all actions that begin with the word Describe, include the following action:

"Action": "mq:Describe*"

To see a list of Amazon MQ actions, see Actions Defined by Amazon MQ in the IAM User Guide.

Resources

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.

The Resource JSON policy element specifies the object or objects to which the action applies. Statements must include either a Resource or a NotResource element. As a best practice, specify a resource using its Amazon Resource Name (ARN). You can do this for actions that support a specific resource type, known as resource-level permissions.

For actions that don't support resource-level permissions, such as listing operations, use a wildcard (*) to indicate that the statement applies to all resources.

"Resource": "*"

In the Amazon MQ, the primary Amazon resources are an Amazon MQ message broker and its configuration. Amazon MQ brokers and configurations each have unique Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) associated with them, as shown in the following table.

Resource Types ARN Condition Keys
brokers arn:aws:mq:us-east-1:123456789012:broker:${brokerName}:${brokerId}

aws:ResourceTag/${TagKey}

configurations arn:${Partition}:mq:${Region}:${Account}:configuration:${configuration-id}

aws:ResourceTag/${TagKey}

For more information about the format of ARNs, see Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) and Amazon Service Namespaces.

For example, to specify the broker named MyBroker with brokerId b-1234a5b6-78cd-901e-2fgh-3i45j6k178l9 in your statement, use the following ARN:

"Resource": "arn:aws:mq:us-east-1:123456789012:broker:MyBroker:b-1234a5b6-78cd-901e-2fgh-3i45j6k178l9"

To specify all brokers and configurations that belong to a specific account, use the wildcard (*):

"Resource": "arn:aws:mq:us-east-1:123456789012:*"

Some Amazon MQ actions, such as those for creating resources, cannot be performed on a specific resource. In those cases, you must use the wildcard (*).

"Resource": "*"

The API action CreateTags requires both a broker and a configuration. To specify multiple resources in a single statement, separate the ARNs with commas. 

"Resource": [
      "resource1",
      "resource2"

To see a list of Amazon MQ resource types and their ARNs, see Resources Defined by Amazon MQ in the IAM User Guide. To learn with which actions you can specify the ARN of each resource, see Actions Defined by Amazon MQ.

Condition keys

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.

The Condition element (or Condition block) lets you specify conditions in which a statement is in effect. The Condition element is optional. 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.

If you specify multiple Condition elements in a statement, or multiple keys in a single Condition element, Amazon evaluates them using a logical AND operation. If you specify multiple values for a single condition key, Amazon evaluates the condition using a logical OR operation. All of the conditions must be met before the statement's permissions are granted.

You can also use placeholder variables when you specify conditions. For example, you can grant an IAM user permission to access a resource only if it is tagged with their IAM user name. For more information, see IAM policy elements: variables and tags in the IAM User Guide.

Amazon supports global condition keys and service-specific condition keys. To see all Amazon global condition keys, see Amazon global condition context keys in the IAM User Guide.

Amazon MQ does not define any service-specific condition keys, but supports using some global condition keys. To see a list of Amazon MQ condition keys, see the table below or Condition Keys for Amazon MQ in the IAM User Guide. To learn with which actions and resources you can use a condition key, see Actions Defined by Amazon MQ.

Condition Keys Description Type
aws:RequestTag/${TagKey} Filters actions based on the tags that are passed in the request. String
aws:ResourceTag/${TagKey} Filters actions based on the tags associated with the resource. String
aws:TagKeys Filters actions based on the tag keys that are passed in the request. String

Examples

To view examples of Amazon MQ identity-based policies, see Amazon MQ Identity-based policy examples.

Amazon MQ Resource-based policies

Currently, Amazon MQ doesn't support IAM authentication using resource-based permissions or resource-based policies.

Authorization based on Amazon MQ tags

You can attach tags to Amazon MQ resources or pass tags in a request to Amazon MQ. To control access based on tags, you provide tag information in the condition element of a policy using the mq:ResourceTag/key-name, aws:RequestTag/key-name, or aws:TagKeys condition keys.

Amazon MQ supports policies based on tags. For instance, you could deny access to Amazon MQ resources that include a tag with the key environment and the value production:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Effect": "Deny",
            "Action": [
                "mq:DeleteBroker",
                "mq:RebootBroker",
                "mq:DeleteTags"
            ],
            "Resource": "*",
            "Condition": {
                "StringEquals": {
                    "aws:ResourceTag/environment": "production"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

This policy will Deny the ability to delete or reboot an Amazon MQ broker that includes the tag environment/production.

For more information on tagging, see:

Amazon MQ IAM roles

An IAM role is an entity within your Amazon account that has specific permissions.

Using Temporary Credentials with Amazon MQ

You can use temporary credentials to sign in with federation, assume an IAM role, or to assume a cross-account role. You obtain temporary security credentials by calling Amazon STS API operations such as AssumeRole or GetFederationToken.

Amazon MQ supports using temporary credentials.

Service roles

This feature allows a service to assume a service role on your behalf. This role allows the service to access resources in other services to complete an action on your behalf. Service roles appear in your IAM account and are owned by the account. This means that an IAM administrator can change the permissions for this role. However, doing so might break the functionality of the service.

Amazon MQ supports service roles.