DecodeAuthorizationMessage

Decodes additional information about the authorization status of a request from an encoded message returned in response to an AWS request.

For example, if a user is not authorized to perform an action that he or she has requested, the request returns a Client.UnauthorizedOperation response (an HTTP 403 response). Some AWS actions additionally return an encoded message that can provide details about this authorization failure.

Note

Only certain AWS actions return an encoded authorization message. The documentation for an individual action indicates whether that action returns an encoded message in addition to returning an HTTP code.

The message is encoded because the details of the authorization status can constitute privileged information that the user who requested the action should not see. To decode an authorization status message, a user must be granted permissions via an IAM policy to request the DecodeAuthorizationMessage (sts:DecodeAuthorizationMessage) action.

The decoded message includes the following type of information:

Whether the request was denied due to an explicit deny or due to the absence of an explicit allow. For more information, see Determining Whether a Request is Allowed or Denied in the IAM User Guide.
The principal who made the request.
The requested action.
The requested resource.
The values of condition keys in the context of the user's request.

Request Parameters

For information about the parameters that are common to all actions, see Common Parameters.

EncodedMessage

The encoded message that was returned with the response.

Type: String

Length Constraints: Minimum length of 1. Maximum length of 10240.

Required: Yes

Response Elements

The following element is returned by the service.

DecodedMessage

An XML document that contains the decoded message.

Type: String

Errors

For information about the errors that are common to all actions, see Common Errors.

InvalidAuthorizationMessage

The error returned if the message passed to DecodeAuthorizationMessage was invalid. This can happen if the token contains invalid characters, such as linebreaks.

HTTP Status Code: 400

Example

Sample Request

POST https://sts.amazonaws.com / HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=utf-8
Host: sts.amazonaws.com
Content-Length: 1148
Expect: 100-continue
Connection: Keep-Alive
Action=DecodeAuthorizationMessage
&EncodedMessage=<encoded-message>
&Version=2011-06-15
&AUTHPARAMS

Sample Response

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<DecodeAuthorizationMessageResponse xmlns="http://sts.amazonaws.com/doc/2011-06-15/"> 
    <requestId>6624a9ca-cd25-4f50-b2a5-7ba65bf07453</requestId>
    <DecodedMessage>
    {
      "allowed": "false",
      "explicitDeny": "false",
      "matchedStatements": "",
      "failures": "",
      "context": {
        "principal": {
          "id": "AIDACKCEVSQ6C2EXAMPLE",
          "name": "Bob",
          "arn": "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/Bob"
        },
        "action": "ec2:StopInstances",
        "resource": "arn:aws:ec2:us-east-1:123456789012:instance/i-dd01c9bd",
        "conditions": [
          {
            "item": {
              "key": "ec2:Tenancy",
              "values": ["default"]
             },
          {
            "item": {
              "key": "ec2:ResourceTag/elasticbeanstalk:environment-name",
              "values": ["Default-Environment"]
            }
          },
          (Additional items ...)
        ]
      }
    }
    </DecodedMessage>
</DecodeAuthorizationMessageResponse>