We are considering moving our file delivery to Cloudfront.
Currently, we generate "secure" URLs for our file delivery on a individual basis which look like:
http://downloads.xxxxx.com/1/2005-01-01_2006-01-01.csv?AWSAccessKeyId=012NFZM3D44FSG20CP82&Expires=1495287427&response-cache-control=No-cache&response-content-disposition=attachment%3B%20filename%3D2005-01-01_2006-01-01.csv&Signature=tWAeES3rhAlv2SQoZkqyYJEexH0%3D
Is there an easy way to apply Cloudfront to the URL above, or do we need to configure them from scratch using Signed URLs? Would the S3 authenticated URL "pass-through" using Cloudfront if I create a simple distribution there?
It is theoretically possible to configure CloudFront to pass-through an S3 signed URL, but doing so would defeat all caching, so... no, it's not a viable solution.
CloudFront uses an entirely different algorithm for signed URLs, so there's not a way to simply transform an existing S3 signed URL into a CloudFront signed URL.
Note also that you'll need to embed the existing response-* parameters in the URL before signing it. CloudFront should still pass them through so that S3 can modify its response as indicated.
Unrelated: one feature you might find interesting is that with CloudFront signed URLs, you actually have the optional ability to embed the client's IP address in the URL in such a way that the URL can only be used from a single IP address. This isn't something that can be done in a straightforward way with an S3 signed URL.
Related
Originally I set up an S3 bucket "bucket.mydomain.com" and used a CNAME in my DNS so I could pull files from there as if it was a subdomain. This worked for http with:
bucket.mydomain.com/image.jpg
or with https like:
s3.amazonaws.com/bucket.mydomain.com/image.jpg
Some files in this bucket were public access but some were "authenticated read" so that I would have to generate a signed URL with expiration in order for them to be read/downloaded.
I wanted to be able to use https without the amazon name in the URL, so I setup a CloudFront distribution with the S3 bucket as the origin. Now I can use https like:
bucket.mydomain.com/image.jpg
The problem I have now is that it seems either all my files in the bucket have to be public read, or they all have to be authenticated read.
How can I force signed URLs to be used for some files, but have other files be public read?
it seems either all my files in the bucket have to be public read, or they all have to be authenticated read
That is -- sort of -- correct, at least in a simple configuration.
CloudFront has a feature called an Origin Access Identity (OAI) that allows it to authenticate requests that it sends to your bucket.
CloudFront also supports controlling viewer access to your resources using CloudFront signed URLs (and signed cookies).
But these two features are independent of each other.
If an OAI is configured, it always sends authentication information to the bucket, regardless of whether the object is private or public.
Similarly, if you enable Restrict Viewer Access for a cache behavior, CloudFront will always require viewer requests to be signed, regardless of whether the object is private or public (in the bucket), because CloudFront doesn't know.
There are a couple of options.
If your content is separated logically by path, the solution is simple: create multiple Cache Behaviors, with Path Patterns to match, like /public/* or /private/* and configure them with individual, appropriate Restrict Viewer Access settings. Whether the object is public in the bucket doesn't matter, since CloudFront will pass-through requests for (e.g.) /public/* without requiring a signed URL if that Cache Behavior does not "Restrict Viewer Access." You can create 25 unique Cache Behavior Path Patterns by default.
If that is not a solution, you could create two CloudFront distributions. One would be without an OAI and without Restrict Viewer Acccess enabled. This distribution can only fetch public objects. The second distribution would have an OAI and would require signed URLs. You would use this for private objects (it would work for public objects, too -- but they would still need signed URLs). There would be no price difference here, but you might have cross-origin issues to contend with.
Or, you could modify your application to sign all URLs for otherwise public content when HTML is being rendered (or API responses, or whatever the context is for your links).
Or, depending on the architecture of your platform, there are probably other more complex approaches that might make sense, depending on the mix of public and private and your willingness to add some intelligence at the edge with Lambda#Edge triggers, which can do things like inspect/modify requests in flight, consult external logic and data sources (e.g. look up a session cookie in DynamoDB), intercept errors, and generate redirects.
Michael's description is good. Amazon has also stated (link below) "Signature Version 2 is being deprecated, and the final support for Signature Version 2 will end on June 24, 2019."
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/auth-request-sig-v2.html
I have a static website that is currently hosted in apache servers. I have an akamai server which routes requests to my site to those servers. I want to move my static websites to Amazon S3, to get away from having to host those static files in my servers.
I created a S3 bucket in amazon, gave it appropriate policies. I also set up my bucket for static website hosting. It told me that I can access the site at
http://my-site.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com
I modified my akamai properties to point to this url as my origin server. When I goto my website, I get Http 504 errors.
What am i missing here?
Thanks
K
S3 buckets don't support HTTPS?
Buckets support HTTPS, but not directly in conjunction with the static web site hosting feature.
See Website Endpoints in the S3 Developer Guide for discussion of the feature set differences between the REST endpoints and the web site hosting endpoints.
Note that if you try to directly connect to your web site hosting endpoint with your browser, you will get a timeout error.
The REST endpoint https://your-bucket.s3.amazonaws.com will work for providing HTTPS between bucket and CDN, as long as there are no dots in the name of your bucket
Or if you need the web site hosting features (index documents and redirects), you can place CloudFront between Akamai and S3, encrypting the traffic inside CloudFront as it left the AWS network on its way to Akamai (it would still be in the clear from S3 to CloudFront, but this is internal traffic on the AWS network). CloudFront automatically provides HTTPS support on the dddexample.cloudfront.net hostname it assigns to each distribution.
I admit, it sounds a bit silly, initially, to put CloudFront behind another CDN but it's really pretty sensible -- CloudFront was designed in part to augment the capabilities of S3. CloudFront also provides Lambda#Edge, which allows injection of logic at 4 trigger points in the request processing cycle (before and after the CloudFront cache, during the request and during the response) where you can modify request and response headers, generate dynamic responses, and make external network requests if needed to implement processing logic.
I faced this problem currently and as mentioned by Michael - sqlbot, putting the CloudFront between Akamai and S3 Bucket could be a workaround, but doing that you're using a CDN behind another CDN. I strongly recommend you to configure the redirects and also customize the response when origin error directly in Akamai (using REST API endpoint in your bucket). You'll need to create three rules, but first, go to CDN > Properties and select your property, Edit New Version based on the last one and click on Add Rule in Property Configuration Settings section. The first rule will be responsible for redirect empty paths to index.html, create it just like the image below:
builtin.AK_PATH is an Akamai's variable. The next step is responsible for redirect paths different from the static ones (html, ico, json, js, css, jpg, png, gif, etc) to \index.html:
The last step is responsible for customize an error response when origin throws an HTTP error code (just like the CloudFront Error Pages). When the origin returns 404 or 403 HTTP status code, the Akamai will call the Failover Hostname Edge Server (which is inside the Akamai network) with the /index.html path. This setup will be triggered when refreshing pages in the browser and when the application has redirection links (which opens new tabs for example). In the Property Hostnames section, add a new hostname that will work as the Failover Hostname Edge Server, the name should has less than 16 characters, then, add the -a.akamaihd.net suffix to it (that's the Akamai pattern). For example: failover-a.akamaihd.net:
Finally, create a new empty rule just like the image below (type the hostname that you just created in the Alternate Hostname in This Property section):
Since you are already using Akamai as a CDN, you could simply use their NetStorage product line to achieve this in a simplified manner.
All you would need to do is to move the content from s3 to Akamai and it would take care of the rest(hosting, distribution, scaling, security, redundancy).
The origin settings on Luna control panel could simply point to the Netstorage FTP location. This will also remove the network latency otherwise present when accessing the S3 bucket from the Akamai Network.
Problem:
I am storing number of HLS streams in S3 with given file structure:
Video1
├──hls3
├──hlsv3-master.m3u8
├──media-1
├──media-2
├──media-3
├──media-4
├──media-5
├──hls4
├──hlsv4-master.m3u8
├──media-1
├──media-2
├──media-3
├──media-4
├──media-5
In my user API I know which exactly user has access to which video content
but I also need to ensure that video links are not sharable and only accessible
by users with right permissions.
Solutions:
1) Use signed / temp S3 urls for private S3 content. Whenever client wants to play some specific video it is
sending request to my API. If user has right permissions the API is generating signed url
and returning it back to client which is passing it to player.
The problem I see here is that real video content is stored in dozen of segments files in media-* directories
and I do not really see how can I protect all of them - would I need to sign each of the segment file urls separately?
2) S3 content is private. Video stream requests made by players are going through my API or separate reverse-proxy.
So whenever client decides to play specific video, API / reverse-proxy is getting the request, doing authentication & authorization
and passing the right content (master play list files & segments).
In this case I still need to make S3 content private and accessible only by my API / reverse-proxy. What should be the recommended way here?
S3 rest authentication via tokens?
3) Use encryption with protected key. In this case all of video segments are encrypted and publicly available. The key is also stored in S3
but is not publicly available. Every key request made by player is authenticated & authorized by my API / reverse-proxy.
These are 3 solutions I have in my mind right now. Not convinced on all of them. I am looking for something simple and bullet proof secure. Any recommendations / suggestions?
Used technology:
ffmpeg for video encoding to different bitrates
bento4 for video segmentation
would I need to sign each of the segment file urls separately?
If the player is requesting directly from S3, then yes. So that's probably not going to be the ideal approach.
One option is CloudFront in front of the bucket. CloudFront can be configured with an Origin Access Identity, which allows it to sign requests and send them to S3 so that it can fetch private S3 objects on behalf of an authorized user, and CloudFront supports both signed URLs (using a different algorithm than S3, with two important differences that I will explain below) or with signed cookies. Signed requests and cookies in CloudFront work very similarly to each other, with the important difference being that a cookie can be set once, then automatically used by the browser for each subsequent request, avoiding the need to sign individual URLs. (Aha.)
For both signed URLs and signed cookies in CloudFront, you get two additional features not easily done with S3 if you use a custom policy:
The policy associated with a CloudFront signature can allow a wildcard in the path, so you could authorize access to any file in, say /media/Video1/* until the time the signature expires. S3 signed URLs do not support wildcards in any form -- an S3 URL can only be valid for a single object.
As long as the CloudFront distribution is configured for IPv4 only, you can tie a signature to a specific client IP address, allowing only access with that signature from a single IP address (CloudFront now supports IPv6 as an optional feature, but it isn't currently compatible with this option). This is a bit aggressive and probably not desirable with a mobile user base, which will switch source addresses as they switch from provider network to Wi-Fi and back.
Signed URLs must still all be generated for all of the content links, but you can generate and sign a URL only once and then reuse the signature, just string-rewriting the URL for each file making that option computationally less expensive... but still cumbersome. Signed cookies, on the other hand, should "just work" for any matching object.
Of course, adding CloudFront should also improve performance through caching and Internet path shortening, since the request hops onto the managed AWS network closer to the browser than it typically will for requests direct to S3. When using CloudFront, requests from the browser are sent to whichever of 60+ global "edge locations" is assumed to be nearest the browser making the request. CloudFront can serve the same cached object to different users with different URLs or cookies, as long as the sigs or cookies are valid, of course.
To use CloudFront signed cookies, at least part of your application -- the part that sets the cookie -- needs to be "behind" the same CloudFront distribution that points to the bucket. This is done by declaring your application as an additional Origin for the distribution, and creating a Cache Behavior for a specific path pattern which, when requested, is forwarded by CloudFront to your application, which can then respond with the appropriate Set-Cookie: headers.
I am not affiliated with AWS, so don't mistake the following as a "pitch" -- just anticipating your next question: CloudFront + S3 is priced such that the cost difference compared to using S3 alone is usually negligible -- S3 doesn't charge you for bandwidth when objects are requested through CloudFront, and CloudFront's bandwidth charges are in some cases slightly lower than the charge for using S3 directly. While this seems counterintuitive, it makes sense that AWS would structure pricing in such a way as to encourage distribution of requests across its network rather than to focus them all against a single S3 region.
Note that no mechanism, either the one above or the one below is completely immune to unauthorized "sharing," since the authentication information is necessarily available to the browser, and thus to the user, depending on the user's expertise... but both approaches seem more than sufficient to keep honest users honest, which is all you can ever hope to do. Since signatures on signed URLs and cookies have expiration times, the duration of the share-ability is limited, and you can identify such patterns through CloudFront log analysis, and react accordingly. No matter what approach you take, don't forget the importance of staying on top of your logs.
The reverse proxy is also a good idea, probably easily implemented, and should perform quite acceptably with no additional data transport charges or throughput issues, if the EC2 machines running the proxy are in the same AWS region as the bucket, and the proxy is based on solid, efficient code like that found in Nginx or HAProxy.
You don't need to sign anything in this environment, because you can configure the bucket to allow the reverse proxy to access the private objects because it has a fixed IP address.
In the bucket policy, you do this by granting "anonymous" users the s3:getObject privilege, only if their source IPv4 address matches the IP address of one of the proxies. The proxy requests objects anonymously (no signing needed) from S3 on behalf of authorized users. This requires that you not be using an S3 VPC endpoint, but instead give the proxy an Elastic IP address or put it behind a NAT Gateway or NAT instance and have S3 trust the source IP of the NAT device. If you do use an S3 VPC endpoint, it should be possible to allow S3 to trust the request simply because it traversed the S3 VPC Endpoint, though I have not tested this. (S3 VPC Endpoints are optional; if you didn't explicitly configure one, then you don't have one, and probably don't need one).
Your third option seems weakest, if I understand it correctly. An authorized but malicious user gets the key an can share it all day long.
I am not sure if this exactly qualifies for StackOverflow, but since I need to do this programatically, and I figure lots of people on SO use CloudFront, I think it does... so here goes:
I want to hide public access to my custom origin server.
CloudFront pulls from the custom origin, however I cannot find documentation or any sort of example on preventing direct requests from users to my origin when proxied behind CloudFront unless my origin is S3... which isn't the case with a custom origin.
What technique can I use to identify/authenticate that a request is being proxied through CloudFront instead of being directly requested by the client?
The CloudFront documentation only covers this case when used with an S3 origin. The AWS forum post that lists CloudFront's IP addresses has a disclaimer that the list is not guaranteed to be current and should not be relied upon. See https://forums.aws.amazon.com/ann.jspa?annID=910
I assume that anyone using CloudFront has some sort of way to hide their custom origin from direct requests / crawlers. I would appreciate any sort of tip to get me started. Thanks.
I would suggest using something similar to facebook's robots.txt in order to prevent all crawlers from accessing all sensitive content in your website.
https://www.facebook.com/robots.txt (you may have to tweak it a bit)
After that, just point your app.. (eg. Rails) to be the custom origin server.
Now rewrite all the urls on your site to become absolute urls like :
https://d2d3cu3tt4cei5.cloudfront.net/hello.html
Basically all urls should point to your cloudfront distribution. Now if someone requests a file from https://d2d3cu3tt4cei5.cloudfront.net/hello.html and it does not have hello.html.. it can fetch it from your server (over an encrypted channel like https) and then serve it to the user.
so even if the user does a view source, they do not know your origin server... only know your cloudfront distribution.
more details on setting this up here:
http://blog.codeship.io/2012/05/18/Assets-Sprites-CDN.html
Create a custom CNAME that only CloudFront uses. On your own servers, block any request for static assets not coming from that CNAME.
For instance, if your site is http://abc.mydomain.net then set up a CNAME for http://xyz.mydomain.net that points to the exact same place and put that new domain in CloudFront as the origin pull server. Then, on requests, you can tell if it's from CloudFront or not and do whatever you want.
Downside is that this is security through obscurity. The client never sees the requests for http://xyzy.mydomain.net but that doesn't mean they won't have some way of figuring it out.
[I know this thread is old, but I'm answering it for people like me who see it months later.]
From what I've read and seen, CloudFront does not consistently identify itself in requests. But you can get around this problem by overriding robots.txt at the CloudFront distribution.
1) Create a new S3 bucket that only contains one file: robots.txt. That will be the robots.txt for your CloudFront domain.
2) Go to your distribution settings in the AWS Console and click Create Origin. Add the bucket.
3) Go to Behaviors and click Create Behavior:
Path Pattern: robots.txt
Origin: (your new bucket)
4) Set the robots.txt behavior at a higher precedence (lower number).
5) Go to invalidations and invalidate /robots.txt.
Now abc123.cloudfront.net/robots.txt will be served from the bucket and everything else will be served from your domain. You can choose to allow/disallow crawling at either level independently.
Another domain/subdomain will also work in place of a bucket, but why go to the trouble.
I have a site which allows users to define their subdomains
xxx.mysite.com
I allow the users to upload their own avatars and logos - ideally, it should upload directly to s3.
1
I am able to generate the policy http://s3.amazonaws.com/doc/s3-example-code/post/post_sample.html here.
However, I do not know what to give
["starts-with", "$success_action_redirect", "http://xxx.mysite.com/"]
I can leave it out but I am not very comfortable allowing anyone to just upload easily. How can I add more restrictions?
I currently restrict the content-type to images
2 https and http
I know that I can force ssl on the entire site and use https://xxx.mysite.com for success_action_redirect.
Is there a regex I can use?
I'm answering my own question.
It is not possible to do a wildcard search. We can do only starts-with.
I just restricted it to https for now. The other way to do it is to have a common code for upload across subdomains and use a parent.xx browser functions. Since it is in the same domain, browser will not complain and the s3 policy will go through.