A Guide to Granting Access to User-Specific Folders in Amazon S3

Overview

In the previous part of this article, we have understood the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), which ‘restrict access to these folders using policies’ and ‘managing permissions’, and in this part of the article, we will learn ‘how to give federated users complete access to the files they own but restrict them from accessing the other folders.’

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Introduction

In this part of the article, we will learn how to create policies with folder-level permissions. We are experiencing a similar scenario to what many people have done with existing file shares. In this scenario, each AWS IAM Identity Center user can only access their home folder. Folder-level permissions allow you to control exactly who can access which objects within a particular bucket.

Mark’s Policy

Below, we can see Mark’s complete policy, which, via the console, will be connected to a federated user named ‘Mark’ in the AWS IAM Identity Center.

This policy will grant full console access to User A for his folder (home/Mark) and no one else’s. Although we may allow each user access to a separate bucket, remember that an AWS account can have up to 100 buckets by default. Instead, we can let thousands of users share a single bucket by making home folders and giving the necessary permissions.

{
 “Version”:”2012-10-17”,
 “Statement”: [
   {
     “Sid”: “AllowUserToSeeBucketListInTheConsole”,
     “Action”: [“s3:ListAllMyBuckets”, “s3:GetBucketLocation”],
     “Effect”: “Allow”,
     “Resource”: [“arn:aws:s3:::*”]
   },
  {
     “Sid”: “AllowRootAndHomeListingOfCompanyBucket”,
     “Action”: [“s3:ListBucket”],
     “Effect”: “Allow”,
     “Resource”: [“arn:aws:s3::: my-new-company-123456789”],
     “Condition”:{“StringEquals”:{“s3:prefix”:[“”,”home/”, “home/Mark”],”s3:delimiter”:[“/”]}}
    },
   {
     “Sid”: “AllowListingOfUserFolder”,
     “Action”: [“s3:ListBucket”],
     “Effect”: “Allow”,
     “Resource”: [“arn:aws:s3:::my-new-company-123456789”],
     “Condition”:{“StringLike”:{“s3:prefix”:[“home/Mark/*”]}}
   },
   {
     “Sid”: “AllowAllS3ActionsInUserFolder”,
     “Effect”: “Allow”,
     “Action”: [“s3:*”],
     “Resource”: [“arn:aws:s3:::my-new-company-123456789/home/Mark/*”]
   }
 ]
}

{

“Version”:”2012-10-17”,

“Statement”: [

{

“Sid”: “AllowUserToSeeBucketListInTheConsole”,

“Action”: [“s3:ListAllMyBuckets”, “s3:GetBucketLocation”],

“Effect”: “Allow”,

“Resource”: [“arn:aws:s3:::*”]

{

“Sid”: “AllowRootAndHomeListingOfCompanyBucket”,

“Action”: [“s3:ListBucket”],

“Effect”: “Allow”,

“Resource”: [“arn:aws:s3::: my-new-company-123456789”],

“Condition”:{“StringEquals”:{“s3:prefix”:[“”,”home/”, “home/Mark”],”s3:delimiter”:[“/”]}}

{

“Sid”: “AllowListingOfUserFolder”,

“Action”: [“s3:ListBucket”],

“Effect”: “Allow”,

“Resource”: [“arn:aws:s3:::my-new-company-123456789”],

“Condition”:{“StringLike”:{“s3:prefix”:[“home/Mark/*”]}}

{

“Sid”: “AllowAllS3ActionsInUserFolder”,

“Effect”: “Allow”,

“Action”: [“s3:*”],

“Resource”: [“arn:aws:s3:::my-new-company-123456789/home/Mark/*”]

}

]

}

Step-by-Step Guide

The preceding AWS IAM Policy should be copied and pasted into the inline policy editor. Use the JSON editor in this situation. See Creating AWS IAM policies for details on how to create policies.

step1

2. Give your consent, choose a name and a description, and then select Next, leaving the other settings as they are.

3. Make sure you update the policies with the bucket name you previously created.

4. Once your permission set has been generated, choose Assign users or groups under AWS accounts in the left navigation pane.

step4

5. Select our user “Mark” and choose Next.

step5

6. We must select the permission set we created earlier, choose Next, leave the rest in the default settings, and choose Submit.

step6

Now that the necessary permissions have been created and attached, Mark can view his Amazon S3 bucket folder but not the objects in other users’ folders. You can confirm this by logging in as Mark on the AWS access portal.

step6b

7. Select the AWS access portal URL by navigating to the Settings summary on the AWS IAM Identity Center dashboard.

step7

8. We need to sign in as the user Mark with the one-time password you received earlier when creating Mark.

step8

9. Open the Amazon S3 Management console.

10. Then, we need to search the Amazon S3 bucket created earlier.

step10

11. Finally, we must navigate Mark’s folder to verify the user’s read and write access. If we navigate to other users’ folders, we will discover we don’t have access to the objects inside them.

Conclusion

In the second part of this blog, we went through the new policy setup. Then, we demonstrated the access writes of the user Mark and checked his read and write permissions. In the next part of the blog, we will be getting an understanding of each section of Mark’s folder. We will be discussing the access control and the part of managing policies with policy variables.

Drop a query if you have any questions regarding Amazon S3 and we will get back to you quickly.

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FAQs

1. How much data can a user store in Amazon S3?

ANS: – You can store infinite items and data on Amazon S3. The size of a single Amazon S3 object might be as little as 0 bytes or as much as 5 TB. Five gigabytes is the biggest object that can be uploaded in a single PUT. It is recommended that clients use the multipart upload functionality for assets greater than 100 MB.

2. How reliable is Amazon S3?

ANS: – With an Amazon S3, you can access the same scalable, available, fast, and cost-effective data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to power its global network of websites. The Amazon S3 Standard storage class is designed for 99.99% availability, and the Amazon S3 Standard-IA storage class, Amazon S3 Intelligent-Tiering storage class, and Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval storage class are designed for 99.9% availability. The Amazon S3 One storage class Zone-IA is designed for 99.5% availability, and the Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval and Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive classes deliver 99.99% availability and a 99.9% SLA. The Amazon S3 Service Level Agreement supports all of these storage classes.

WRITTEN BY Guru Bhajan Singh

Guru Bhajan Singh is currently working as a Software Engineer - PHP at CloudThat and has 6+ years of experience in PHP. He holds a Master's degree in Computer Applications and enjoys coding, problem-solving, learning new things, and writing technical blogs.