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If an attacker can cause a vulnerable application (e.g., a PHP, Node.js, or Java app that follows external URLs) to make a request to this decoded endpoint, the server will return the active IAM role's Access Key ID, Secret Access Key, and Session Token.
With those credentials, an attacker can:
The primary purpose of this URL is to allow an EC2 instance to retrieve temporary security credentials for the IAM role it's been launched with. These credentials can then be used to access other AWS services without needing to configure and embed long-term access keys within the instance. If an attacker can cause a vulnerable application (e
Here are some key points about the usage:
This string appears to be a URL-encoded SSRF payload that was: Full decoded URL: http://169
First, let’s decode the URL-encoded string:
Full decoded URL:
http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials/ specifically within Amazon Web Services (AWS)
This is not a public internet address. It is an internal, non-routable IP address reserved for instance metadata services, specifically within Amazon Web Services (AWS), though other clouds (Google Cloud, Azure, OpenStack) use similar endpoints.
Restrict outbound traffic at the security group or firewall level. No instance should need to make arbitrary HTTP requests to its own metadata service except via trusted system processes.