Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

Subscribing to Amazon SNS GuardDuty announcements

This section provides information about subscribing to Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service) for GuardDuty announcements to receive notifications about newly released finding types, updates to the existing finding types, and other functionality changes. Notifications are available in all formats that Amazon SNS supports.

The GuardDuty SNS sends announcement about updates to the GuardDuty service across Amazon to any subscribed account. To receive notifications about findings within your account, see Creating custom responses to GuardDuty findings with Amazon CloudWatch Events.

You can subscribe an Amazon SQS queue to this notification topic, but you must use a topic ARN that is in the same Region. For more information, see Tutorial: Subscribing an Amazon SQS queue to an Amazon SNS topic in the Amazon Simple Queue Service developer guide.

You can also use an Amazon Lambda function to trigger events when notifications are received. For more information, see Invoking Lambda functions using Amazon SNS notifications in the Amazon Simple Queue Service developer guide.

The Amazon SNS topic ARNs for each Region are shown below.

Amazon SNS message format

An example GuardDuty update notification message about new findings is shown below:

{
    "Type" : "Notification",
    "MessageId" : "9101dc6b-726f-4df0-8646-ec2f94e674bc",
    "TopicArn" : "arn:aws-cn:sns:us-west-2:934957504740:GuardDutyAnnouncements",
    "Message" : "{\"version\":\"1\",\"type\":\"NEW_FINDINGS\",\"findingDetails\":[{\"link\":\"https://docs.amazonaws.cn//guardduty/latest/ug/guardduty_unauthorized.html\",\"findingType\":\"UnauthorizedAccess:EC2/TorClient\",\"findingDescription\":\"This finding informs you that an EC2 instance in your Amazon environment is making connections to a Tor Guard or an Authority node. Tor is software for enabling anonymous communication. Tor Guards and Authority nodes act as initial gateways into a Tor network. This traffic can indicate that this EC2 instance is acting as a client on a Tor network. A common use for a Tor client is to circumvent network monitoring and filter for access to unauthorized or illicit content. Tor clients can also generate nefarious Internet traffic, including attacking SSH servers. This activity can indicate that your EC2 instance is compromised.\"}]}",
    "Timestamp" : "2018-03-09T00:25:43.483Z",
    "SignatureVersion" : "1",
    "Signature" : "XWox8GDGLRiCgDOXlo/fG9Lu/88P8S0FL6M6oQYOmUFzkucuhoblsdea3BjqdCHcWR7qdhMPQnLpN7y9iBrWVUqdAGJrukAI8athvAS+4AQD/V/QjrhsEnlj+GaiW+ozAu006X6GopOzFGnCtPMROjCMrMonjz7Hpv/8KRuMZR3pyQYm5d4wWB7xBPYhUMuLoZ1V8YFs55FMtgQV/YLhSYuEu0BP1GMtLQauxDkscOtPP/vjhGQLFx1Q9LTadcQiRHtNIBxWL87PSI+BVvkin6AL7PhksvdQ7FAgHfXsit+6p8GyOvKCqaeBG7HZhR1AbpyVka7JSNRO/6ssyrlj1g==",
    "SigningCertURL" : "https://sns.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/SimpleNotificationService-433026a4050d206028891664da859041.pem",
    "UnsubscribeURL" : "https://sns.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/?Action=Unsubscribe&SubscriptionArn=arn:aws-cn:sns:us-west-2:934957504740:GuardDutyAnnouncements:9225ed2b-7228-4665-8a01-c8a5db6859f4"
}

The parsed Message value (with escaped quotes removed) is shown below:

{
    "version": "1",
    "type": "NEW_FINDINGS",
    "findingDetails": [{
        "link": "https://docs.amazonaws.cn//guardduty/latest/ug/guardduty_unauthorized.html",
        "findingType": "UnauthorizedAccess:EC2/TorClient",
        "findingDescription": "This finding informs you that an EC2 instance in your Amazon environment is making connections to a Tor Guard or an Authority node. Tor is software for enabling anonymous communication. Tor Guards and Authority nodes act as initial gateways into a Tor network. This traffic can indicate that this EC2 instance is acting as a client on a Tor network. A common use for a Tor client is to circumvent network monitoring and filter for access to unauthorized or illicit content. Tor clients can also generate nefarious Internet traffic, including attacking SSH servers. This activity can indicate that your EC2 instance is compromised."
    }]
}

An example GuardDuty update notification message about GuardDuty functionality updates is shown below:

{
    "Type" : "Notification",
    "MessageId" : "9101dc6b-726f-4df0-8646-ec2f94e674bc",
    "TopicArn" : "arn:aws-cn:sns:us-west-2:934957504740:GuardDutyAnnouncements",
    "Message" : "{\"version\":\"1\",\"type\":\"NEW_FEATURES\",\"featureDetails\":[{\"featureDescription\":\"Customers with high-volumes of global CloudTrail events should see a net positive impact on their GuardDuty costs.\",\"featureLink\":\"https://docs.amazonaws.cn//guardduty/latest/ug/guardduty_data-sources.html#guardduty_cloudtrail\"}]}",
    "Timestamp" : "2018-03-09T00:25:43.483Z",
    "SignatureVersion" : "1",
    "Signature" : "XWox8GDGLRiCgDOXlo/fG9Lu/88P8S0FL6M6oQYOmUFzkucuhoblsdea3BjqdCHcWR7qdhMPQnLpN7y9iBrWVUqdAGJrukAI8athvAS+4AQD/V/QjrhsEnlj+GaiW+ozAu006X6GopOzFGnCtPMROjCMrMonjz7Hpv/8KRuMZR3pyQYm5d4wWB7xBPYhUMuLoZ1V8YFs55FMtgQV/YLhSYuEu0BP1GMtLQauxDkscOtPP/vjhGQLFx1Q9LTadcQiRHtNIBxWL87PSI+BVvkin6AL7PhksvdQ7FAgHfXsit+6p8GyOvKCqaeBG7HZhR1AbpyVka7JSNRO/6ssyrlj1g==",
    "SigningCertURL" : "https://sns.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/SimpleNotificationService-433026a4050d206028891664da859041.pem",
    "UnsubscribeURL" : "https://sns.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/?Action=Unsubscribe&SubscriptionArn=arn:aws-cn:sns:us-west-2:934957504740:GuardDutyAnnouncements:9225ed2b-7228-4665-8a01-c8a5db6859f4"
}

The parsed Message value (with escaped quotes removed) is shown below:

{
    "version": "1",
    "type": "NEW_FEATURES",
    "featureDetails": [{
        "featureDescription": "Customers with high-volumes of global CloudTrail events should see a net positive impact on their GuardDuty costs.",
        "featureLink": "https://docs.amazonaws.cn//guardduty/latest/ug/guardduty_data-sources.html#guardduty_cloudtrail"
    }]
}

An example GuardDuty update notification message about updated findings is shown below:

{
    "Type": "Notification",
    "MessageId": "9101dc6b-726f-4df0-8646-ec2f94e674bc",
    "TopicArn": "arn:aws-cn:sns:us-west-2:934957504740:GuardDutyAnnouncements",
    "Message": "{\"version\":\"1\",\"type\":\"UPDATED_FINDINGS\",\"findingDetails\":[{\"link\":\"https://docs.amazonaws.cn//guardduty/latest/ug/guardduty_unauthorized.html\",\"findingType\":\"UnauthorizedAccess:EC2/TorClient\",\"description\":\"Increased severity value from 5 to 8.\"}]}",
    "Timestamp": "2018-03-09T00:25:43.483Z",
    "SignatureVersion": "1",
    "Signature": "XWox8GDGLRiCgDOXlo/fG9Lu/88P8S0FL6M6oQYOmUFzkucuhoblsdea3BjqdCHcWR7qdhMPQnLpN7y9iBrWVUqdAGJrukAI8athvAS+4AQD/V/QjrhsEnlj+GaiW+ozAu006X6GopOzFGnCtPMROjCMrMonjz7Hpv/8KRuMZR3pyQYm5d4wWB7xBPYhUMuLoZ1V8YFs55FMtgQV/YLhSYuEu0BP1GMtLQauxDkscOtPP/vjhGQLFx1Q9LTadcQiRHtNIBxWL87PSI+BVvkin6AL7PhksvdQ7FAgHfXsit+6p8GyOvKCqaeBG7HZhR1AbpyVka7JSNRO/6ssyrlj1g==",
    "SigningCertURL": "https://sns.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/SimpleNotificationService-433026a4050d206028891664da859041.pem",
    "UnsubscribeURL": "https://sns.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/?Action=Unsubscribe&SubscriptionArn=arn:aws-cn:sns:us-west-2:934957504740:GuardDutyAnnouncements:9225ed2b-7228-4665-8a01-c8a5db6859f4"
}

The parsed Message value (with escaped quotes removed) is shown below:

{
    "version": "1",
    "type": "UPDATED_FINDINGS",
    "findingDetails": [{
        "link": "https://docs.amazonaws.cn//guardduty/latest/ug/guardduty_unauthorized.html",
        "findingType": "UnauthorizedAccess:EC2/TorClient",
        "description": "Increased severity value from 5 to 8."
    }]
}