AmazonDynamoDBFullAccesswithDataPipeline

Last Modified

Mar 12, 2026

March 12, 2026 at 09:27 PM UTC

Version

Total Versions

Created

Nov 12, 2015

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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 change identities and their permissions
Grants 1 permissions management action on IAM, IAM Identity Center or Organizations, on any resource with no condition.
iam:passrole
Use with caution: Grant it only to identity administrators, and protect your admin roles and SCPs with a permissions boundary or an SCP of their own.
High
Can launch resources that run as a more privileged role
Grants every action of 6 documented escalation paths on any resource with no condition.
- datapipeline-001iam:PassRole + datapipeline:CreatePipeline + datapipeline:PutPipelineDefinition + datapipeline:ActivatePipelineunrestricted
- ec2-001iam:PassRole + ec2:RunInstancesunrestricted
- emr-001iam:PassRole + elasticmapreduce:RunJobFlowunrestricted
- lambda-001iam:PassRole + lambda:CreateFunction + lambda:InvokeFunctionunrestricted
- lambda-002iam:PassRole + lambda:CreateFunction + lambda:CreateEventSourceMappingunrestricted
- lambda-006iam:PassRole + lambda:CreateFunction + lambda:AddPermissionunrestricted
Use with caution: Make sure no highly privileged role trusts the service involved, and restrict iam:PassRole in your own policies or boundary to named roles with iam:PassedToService.
High
Can take over existing resources that run as another role
Grants every action of 3 documented escalation paths on any resource with no condition.
- lambda-003lambda:UpdateFunctionCodeunrestricted
- lambda-004lambda:UpdateFunctionCode + lambda:InvokeFunctionunrestricted
- lambda-005lambda:UpdateFunctionCode + lambda:AddPermissionunrestricted
Use with caution: List the roles attached to the functions, instances, pipelines or notebooks it can modify: the holder effectively has them too.
Medium
Can read secrets
Reads Lambda environment variables, where credentials often live, on any resource with no condition.
lambda:GetFunctionConfiguration (via lambda:*)
Use with caution: Where the holder needs only some secrets, write your own policy scoped to their ARNs or tags, and limit decryption in the KMS key policies.
Medium
Can rewrite resource policies and sharing
Grants 22 permissions management actions across 4 services (dynamodb, elasticmapreduce, lambda, s3) on any resource, enough to share resources outside the account.
dynamodb:deleteresourcepolicydynamodb:putresourcepolicyelasticmapreduce:deleteworkspaceaccesselasticmapreduce:putblockpublicaccessconfigurationelasticmapreduce:putworkspaceaccesslambda:addlayerversionpermissionlambda:addpermissionlambda:deleteresourcepolicylambda:putresourcepolicylambda:removelayerversionpermissionlambda:removepermissions3:putaccessgrantsinstanceresourcepolicyand 10 more
Use with caution: Turn on IAM Access Analyzer external access findings, and keep account-level guards like S3 Block Public Access enabled.
Medium
Can read data in every bucket or table
Reads any object in any S3 bucket; any DynamoDB table. Read-only is not the same as harmless when the data is the asset.
s3:GetObject (via s3:Get*)dynamodb:Scan (via dynamodb:*)dynamodb:GetItem (via dynamodb:*)
Use with caution: Read access to data is still access to data. For people who only need to see configuration, ViewOnlyAccess carries none of these signals.
Medium
Full access to 4 services on every resource
Uses datapipeline:*, dynamodb:*, elasticmapreduce:*, lambda:* with Resource "*" and no condition, so every action AWS adds to those services later is granted too.
datapipeline:*dynamodb:*elasticmapreduce:*lambda:*
Use with caution: The grant grows every time the service does. For long-lived access, prefer a policy that lists the actions you actually need.
Medium
Flagged by AWS IAM Access Analyzer
AWS's own policy validation raises 1 security warning: PASS_ROLE_WITH_STAR_IN_RESOURCE.
- Using the iam:PassRole action with wildcards (*) in the resource can be overly permissive because it allows iam:PassRole permissions on multiple resources. We recommend that you specify resource ARNs or add the iam:PassedToService condition key to your statement.
Use with caution: Read AWS's finding and the documentation it links to.

IAM Access Analyzer (1)

Security warning / PASS_ROLE_WITH_STAR_IN_RESOURCE
Using the iam:PassRole action with wildcards (*) in the resource can be overly permissive because it allows iam:PassRole permissions on multiple resources. We recommend that you specify resource ARNs or add the iam:PassedToService condition key to your statement. AWS docs

Policy Document

View on GitHub

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92{
  "PolicyVersion": {
    "Document": {
      "Version": "2012-10-17",
      "Statement": [
        {
          "Action": [
            "cloudwatch:DeleteAlarms",
            "cloudwatch:DescribeAlarmHistory",
            "cloudwatch:DescribeAlarms",
            "cloudwatch:DescribeAlarmsForMetric",
            "cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics",
            "cloudwatch:ListMetrics",
            "cloudwatch:PutMetricAlarm",
            "dynamodb:*",
            "sns:CreateTopic",
            "sns:DeleteTopic",
            "sns:ListSubscriptions",
            "sns:ListSubscriptionsByTopic",
            "sns:ListTopics",
            "sns:Subscribe",
            "sns:Unsubscribe",
            "sns:SetTopicAttributes"
          ],
          "Effect": "Allow",
          "Resource": "*",
          "Sid": "DDBConsole"
        },
        {
          "Action": [
            "lambda:*",
            "iam:ListRoles"
          ],
          "Effect": "Allow",
          "Resource": "*",
          "Sid": "DDBConsoleTriggers"
        },
        {
          "Action": [
            "datapipeline:*",
            "iam:ListRoles"
          ],
          "Effect": "Allow",
          "Resource": "*",
          "Sid": "DDBConsoleImportExport"
        },
        {
          "Effect": "Allow",
          "Action": [
            "iam:GetRolePolicy",
            "iam:PassRole"
          ],
          "Resource": [
            "*"
          ],
          "Sid": "IAMEDPRoles"
        },
        {
          "Action": [
            "ec2:CreateTags",
            "ec2:DescribeInstances",
            "ec2:RunInstances",
            "ec2:StartInstances",
            "ec2:StopInstances",
            "ec2:TerminateInstances",
            "elasticmapreduce:*",
            "datapipeline:*"
          ],
          "Effect": "Allow",
          "Resource": "*",
          "Sid": "EMR"
        },
        {
          "Action": [
            "s3:DeleteObject",
            "s3:Get*",
            "s3:List*",
            "s3:Put*"
          ],
          "Effect": "Allow",
          "Resource": [
            "*"
          ],
          "Sid": "S3"
        }
      ]
    },
    "VersionId": "v2",
    "IsDefaultVersion": true,
    "CreateDate": "2015-11-12T02:17:42+00:00"
  }
}