AWS Federated User security credentials

I recently gained access to my organisation’s AWS account using federated login. This is new to me and I was struggling to work out how to get my user credentials.

It turns out that federated login is different to creating an IAM user, and that I needed to create my own IAM user.

If you’re not sure if you’re on a federated login, this is how it looks:

Creating an IAM user

Go to the IAM service and create a new user. Make sure not to require password reset as the IAM permissions may not allow users to change their password

Add any roles that are relevant. In this example I add admin, but make sure to add only the privileges you need

Add any tags if needed for reporting. I don’t use these

Review your new user and click create user at the bottom

This will show you all your credentials. Don’t forget to click show under secret access key and password and/or download the CSV

These credentials were edited using developer tools, so they've never worked. They were then revoked and deleted

Visit the URL to log in

And you’re done!