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CloudTrail userIdentity Element - AWS CloudTrail
ExamplesFieldsValues for AWS STS APIs with SAML and Web Identity Federation

CloudTrail userIdentity Element

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) provides different types of identities. The userIdentity element contains details about the type of IAM identity that made the request, and which credentials were used. If temporary credentials were used, the element shows how the credentials were obtained.

Examples

userIdentity with IAM user credentials

The following example shows the userIdentity element of a simple request made with the credentials of the IAM user named Alice. 

"userIdentity": {
  "type": "IAMUser",
  "principalId": "AIDAJ45Q7YFFAREXAMPLE",
  "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Alice",
  "accountId": "123456789012",
  "accessKeyId": "AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE",
  "userName": "Alice"
}

userIdentity with temporary security credentials

The following example shows a userIdentity element for a request made with temporary security credentials obtained by assuming an IAM role. The element contains additional details about the role that was assumed to get credentials. 

"userIdentity": {
    "type": "AssumedRole",
    "principalId": "AROAIDPPEZS35WEXAMPLE:AssumedRoleSessionName",
    "arn": "arn:aws:sts::123456789012:assumed-role/RoleToBeAssumed/MySessionName",
    "accountId": "123456789012",
    "accessKeyId": "AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE",
    "sessionContext": {
      "attributes": {
        "mfaAuthenticated": "false",
        "creationDate": "20131102T010628Z"
      },
      "sessionIssuer": {
        "type": "Role",
        "principalId": "AROAIDPPEZS35WEXAMPLE",
        "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/RoleToBeAssumed",
        "accountId": "123456789012",
        "userName": "RoleToBeAssumed"
      }
    }
}

Fields

The following fields can appear in a userIdentity element.

type

The type of the identity. The following values are possible:

  • Root – The request was made with your AWS account credentials. If the userIdentity type is Root and you set an alias for your account, the userName field contains your account alias. For more information, see Your AWS Account ID and Its Alias.

  • IAMUser – The request was made with the credentials of an IAM user.

  • AssumedRole – The request was made with temporary security credentials that were obtained with a role via a call to the AWS Security Token Service (AWS STS) AssumeRole API. This can include roles for Amazon EC2 and cross-account API access.

  • FederatedUser – The request was made with temporary security credentials that were obtained via a call to the AWS STS GetFederationToken API. The sessionIssuer element indicates if the API was called with root or IAM user credentials.

    For more information about temporary security credentials, see Temporary Security Credentials in the IAM User Guide.

  • AWSAccount – The request was made by another AWS account.

  • AWSService – The request was made by an AWS account that belongs to an AWS service. For example, AWS Elastic Beanstalk assumes an IAM role in your account to call other AWS services on your behalf.

AWSAccount and AWSService appear for type in your logs when there is cross-account access using an IAM role that you own.

Example: Cross-account access initiated by another AWS account

  1. You own an IAM role in your account.

  2. Another AWS account switches to that role to assume the role for your account.

  3. Because you own the IAM role, you receive a log that shows the other account assumed the role. The type is AWSAccount. For an example log entry, see AWS STS API Event in CloudTrail Log File.

Example: Cross-account access initiated by an AWS service

  1. You own an IAM role in your account.

  2. An AWS account owned by an AWS service assumes that role.

  3. Because you own the IAM role, you receive a log that shows the AWS service assumed the role. The type is AWSService.

userName

The friendly name of the identity that made the call. The value that appears in userName is based on the value in type. The following table shows the relationship between type and userName:

type userName Description
Root (no alias set) Not present If you have not set up an alias for your AWS account, the userName field does not appear. For more information about account aliases, see Your AWS Account ID and Its Alias. Note that the userName field will never contain Root because Root is an identity type, not a user name.
Root (alias set) The account alias For more information about AWS account aliases, see Your AWS Account ID and Its Alias.
IAMUser The user name of the IAM user

AssumedRole

 Not present For AssumedRole type, you can find the userName field in sessionContext, as part of the sessionIssuer element. For an example entry, see Examples.
FederatedUser Not present The sessionContext and sessionIssuer section contains information about the identity that issued the session for the federated user.
AWSService Not present
AWSAccount Not present
Note

The userName field contains the string HIDDEN_DUE_TO_SECURITY_REASONS when the recorded event is a console sign-in failure caused by incorrect user name input. CloudTrail does not record the contents in this case because the text could contain sensitive information, as in the following examples:

  • A user accidentally types a password in the user name field.

  • A user clicks the link for one AWS account's sign-in page, but then types the account number for a different one.

  • A user accidentally types the account name of a personal email account, a bank sign-in identifier, or some other private ID.

principalId

A unique identifier for the entity that made the call. For requests made with temporary security credentials, this value includes the session name that is passed to the AssumeRole, AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity, or GetFederationToken API call.

arn

The Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the principal that made the call. The last section of the arn contains the user or role that made the call.

accountId

The account that owns the entity that granted permissions for the request. If the request was made with temporary security credentials, this is the account that owns the IAM user or role that was used to obtain credentials.

accessKeyId

The access key ID that was used to sign the request. If the request was made with temporary security credentials, this is the access key ID of the temporary credentials.

sessionContext

If the request was made with temporary security credentials, an element that provides information about the session that was created for those credentials. Sessions are created when any API is called that returns temporary credentials. Sessions are also created when users work in the console and when users make a request with APIs that include multi-factor authentication. Attributes for this element are:

  • creationDate – The date and time when the temporary security credentials were issued. Represented in ISO 8601 basic notation.

  • mfaAuthenticated – The value is true if the root user or IAM user whose credentials were used for the request also was authenticated with an MFA device; otherwise, false.

invokedBy

The name of the AWS service that made the request, such as Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling or AWS Elastic Beanstalk.

sessionIssuer

If the request was made with temporary security credentials, an element that provides information about how the credentials were obtained. For example, if the temporary security credentials were obtained by assuming a role, this element provides information about the assumed role. If the credentials were obtained with root or IAM user credentials to call AWS STS GetFederationToken, the element provides information about the root account or IAM user. Attributes for this element are:

  • type – The source of the temporary security credentials, such as Root, IAMUser, or Role.

  • userName – The friendly name of the user or role that issued the session. The value that appears depends on the sessionIssuer identity type. The following table shows the relationship between sessionIssuer type and userName:

    sessionIssuer type userName Description
    Root (no alias set) Not present If you have not set up an alias for your account, the userName field does not appear. For more information about AWS account aliases, see Your AWS Account ID and Its Alias. Note that the userName field will never contain Root because Root is an identity type, not a user name.
    Root (alias set) The account alias For more information about AWS account aliases, see Your AWS Account ID and Its Alias.
    IAMUser The user name of the IAM user This also applies when a federated user is using a session issued by IAMUser.
    Role The role name A role assumed by an IAM user, AWS service, or web identity federated user in a role session.

  • principalId – The internal ID of the entity that was used to get credentials.

  • arn – The ARN of the source (account, IAM user, or role) that was used to get temporary security credentials.

  • accountId – The account that owns the entity that was used to get credentials.

webIdFederationData

If the request was made with temporary security credentials obtained by web identity federation, an element that lists information about the identity provider. Attributes for this element are:

  • federatedProvider – The principal name of the identity provider (for example, www.amazon.com for Login with Amazon or accounts.google.com for Google).

  • attributes – The application ID and user ID as reported by the provider (for example, www.amazon.com:app_id and www.amazon.com:user_id for Login with Amazon). For more information, see Available Keys for Web Identity Federation in the IAM User Guide.

Values for AWS STS APIs with SAML and Web Identity Federation

AWS CloudTrail supports logging AWS Security Token Service (AWS STS) API calls made with Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) and web identity federation. When a call is made to the AssumeRoleWithSAML and AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity APIs, CloudTrail records the call and delivers the event to your Amazon S3 bucket.

The userIdentity element for these APIs contains the following values.

type

The identity type.

  • SAMLUser – The request was made with SAML assertion.

  • WebIdentityUser – The request was made by a web identity federation provider.

principalId

A unique identifier for the entity that made the call.

  • For SAMLUser, this is a combination of the saml:namequalifier and saml:sub keys.

  • For WebIdentityUser, this is a combination of the issuer, application ID, and user ID.

userName

The name of the identity that made the call.

identityProvider

The principal name of the external identity provider. This field appears only for SAMLUser or WebIdentityUser types.

  • For SAMLUser, this is the saml:namequalifier key for the SAML assertion.

  • For WebIdentityUser, this is the issuer name of the web identity federation provider. This can be a provider that you configured, such as the following:

    • cognito-identity.amazon.com for Amazon Cognito

    • www.amazon.com for Login with Amazon

    • accounts.google.com for Google

    • graph.facebook.com for Facebook

The following is an example userIdentity element for the AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity action. 

"userIdentity": {
    "type": "WebIdentityUser",
    "principalId": "accounts.google.com:application-id.apps.googleusercontent.com:user-id",
    "userName": "user-id",
    "identityProvider": "accounts.google.com"
  }

For example logs of how the userIdentity element appears for SAMLUser and WebIdentityUser types, see Logging IAM Events with AWS CloudTrail.