AWSCloud9User

Last Modified

Mar 12, 2026

March 12, 2026 at 09:25 PM UTC

Version

v12

Total Versions

Created

Feb 12, 2026

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Risk

High

An unrestricted escalation path, identity administration, secret reads or the power to switch off security monitoring. Read from this policy document alone: trust policies, boundaries and SCPs in your account still decide what actually succeeds. How this is assessed

High
Can take over existing resources that run as another role
Grants every action of 1 documented escalation path on any resource with no condition.
- ssm-001ssm:StartSessionunrestricted
Use with caution: List the roles attached to the functions, instances, pipelines or notebooks it can modify: the holder effectively has them too.

IAM Access Analyzer (1)

Suggestion / EQUIVALENT_TO_NULL_FALSE
We recommend replacing the key ssm:resourceTag/aws:cloud9:environment in the condition block of StringLike with {ssm:resourceTag/aws:cloud9:environment: false} to ensure better enforcement of the condition. AWS docs

Policy Document

View on GitHub

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113{
  "PolicyVersion": {
    "Document": {
      "Version": "2012-10-17",
      "Statement": [
        {
          "Effect": "Allow",
          "Action": [
            "cloud9:UpdateUserSettings",
            "cloud9:GetUserSettings",
            "cloud9:GetMigrationExperiences",
            "iam:GetUser",
            "iam:ListUsers",
            "ec2:DescribeVpcs",
            "ec2:DescribeSubnets",
            "ec2:DescribeInstanceTypeOfferings",
            "ec2:DescribeRouteTables"
          ],
          "Resource": "*"
        },
        {
          "Effect": "Allow",
          "Action": [
            "cloud9:CreateEnvironmentEC2",
            "cloud9:CreateEnvironmentSSH"
          ],
          "Resource": "*",
          "Condition": {
            "Null": {
              "cloud9:OwnerArn": "true"
            }
          }
        },
        {
          "Effect": "Allow",
          "Action": [
            "cloud9:GetUserPublicKey"
          ],
          "Resource": "*",
          "Condition": {
            "Null": {
              "cloud9:UserArn": "true"
            }
          }
        },
        {
          "Effect": "Allow",
          "Action": [
            "cloud9:DescribeEnvironmentMemberships"
          ],
          "Resource": [
            "*"
          ],
          "Condition": {
            "Null": {
              "cloud9:UserArn": "true",
              "cloud9:EnvironmentId": "true"
            }
          }
        },
        {
          "Effect": "Allow",
          "Action": [
            "iam:CreateServiceLinkedRole"
          ],
          "Resource": "*",
          "Condition": {
            "StringLike": {
              "iam:AWSServiceName": "cloud9.amazonaws.com"
            }
          }
        },
        {
          "Effect": "Allow",
          "Action": [
            "ssm:StartSession",
            "ssm:GetConnectionStatus"
          ],
          "Resource": "arn:aws:ec2:*:*:instance/*",
          "Condition": {
            "StringLike": {
              "ssm:resourceTag/aws:cloud9:environment": "*"
            },
            "StringEquals": {
              "aws:CalledViaFirst": "cloud9.amazonaws.com"
            }
          }
        },
        {
          "Effect": "Allow",
          "Action": [
            "ssm:StartSession"
          ],
          "Resource": [
            "arn:aws:ssm:*:*:document/*"
          ]
        },
        {
          "Effect": "Allow",
          "Action": [
            "ssmmessages:OpenDataChannel"
          ],
          "Resource": [
            "arn:aws:ssm:*:*:session/*"
          ]
        }
      ]
    },
    "VersionId": "v12",
    "IsDefaultVersion": true,
    "CreateDate": "2026-02-12T18:00:52+00:00"
  }
}