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99designs
aws-vault
Go2015–2025
99designs / aws-vault

aws-vault

A vault for securely storing and accessing AWS credentials in development environments

24Distinct people
31Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
9KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

A vault for securely storing and accessing AWS credentials in development environments

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year31 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2015-09-29 23:44:18 UTC to 2025-06-15 00:44:39 UTC.

02462015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments20152016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 0 submissions, 7 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC312
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC312
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC707
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
AWS Vault WarningThis project has been abandoned and it's not receiving any more updates. If you want to continue to receive updates or contribute, please feel free to look at the active fork at: https://github.com/ByteNess/aws-vault AWS Vault is a tool to securely store and access AWS credentials in a development environment. AWS Vault stores IAM credentials in your operating system's secure keystore and then generates temporary credentials from those to expose to your shell and applications. It's designed to be complementary to the AWS CLI tools, and is aware of your profiles and configuration in ~/.aws/config. Check out the announcement blog post for more details. Installing You can install AWS Vault: by downloading the latest release on macOS with Homebrew: brew install aws-vault on macOS with MacPorts: port install aws-vault on Windows with Chocolatey: choco install aws-vault on Windows with Scoop: scoop install aws-vault on Linux with Homebrew on Linux: brew install aws-vault on Arch Linux: pacman -S aws-vault on Gentoo Linux: emerge --ask app-admin/aws-vault (enable Guru first) on FreeBSD: pkg install aws-vault on OpenSUSE: enable devel:languages:go repo then zypper install aws-vault with Nix: nix-env -i aws-vault with asdf-vm: asdf plugin-add aws-vault https://github.com/karancode/asdf-aws-vault.git && asdf install aws-vault <version> Documentation Config, usage, tips and tricks are available in the USAGE.md file. Vaulting Backends The supported vaulting backends are: macOS Keychain Windows Credential Manager Secret Service (Gnome Keyring, KWallet) KWallet Pass Encrypted file Use the --backend flag or AWS_VAULT_BACKEND environment variable to specify. Quick start # Store AWS credentials for the "jonsmith" profile $ aws-vault add jonsmith Enter Access Key Id: ABDCDEFDASDASF Enter Secret Key: %%% # Execute a command (using temporary credentials) $ aws-vault exec jonsmith -- aws s3 ls bucket_1 bucket_2 # open a browser window and login to the AWS Console $ aws-vault login jonsmith # List credentials $ aws-vault list Profile Credentials Sessions ======= =========== ======== jonsmith jonsmith - # Start a subshell with temporary credentials $ aws-vault exec jonsmith Starting subshell /bin/zsh, use `exit` to exit the subshell $ aws s3 ls bucket_1 bucket_2 How it works aws-vault uses Amazon's STS service to generate temporary credentials via the GetSessionToken or AssumeRole API calls. These expire in a short period of time, so the risk of leaking credentials is reduced. AWS Vault then exposes the temporary credentials to the sub-process in one of two ways Environment variables are written to the sub-process. Notice in the below example how the AWS credentials get written out $ aws-vault exec jonsmith -- env | grep AWS AWS_VAULT=jonsmith AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-east-1 AWS_REGION=us-east-1 AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=%%% AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=%%% AWS_SESSION_TOKEN=%%% AWS_CREDENTIAL_EXPIRATION=2020-04-16T11:16:27Z Local metadata server is started. This approach has the advantage that anything that uses Amazon's SDKs will automatically refresh credentials as needed, so session times can be as short as possible. $ aws-vault exec --server jonsmith -- env | grep AWS AWS_VAULT=jonsmith AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-east-1 AWS_REGION=us-east-1 AWS_CONTAINER_CREDENTIALS_FULL_URI=%%% AWS_CONTAINER_AUTHORIZATION_TOKEN=%%% The default is to use environment variables, but you can opt-in to the local instance metadata server with the --server flag on the exec command. Roles and MFA Best-practice is to create Roles to delegate permissions. For security, you should also require that users provide a one-time key generated from a multi-factor authentication (MFA) device. First you'll need to create the users and roles in IAM, as well as setup an MFA device. You can then set up IAM roles to enforce MFA. Here's an example configuration using roles and MFA: [default] region = us-east-1 [profile jonsmith] mfa_serial = arn:aws:iam::111111111111:mfa/jonsmith [profile foo-readonly] source_profile = jonsmith role_arn = arn:aws:iam::22222222222:role/ReadOnly [profile foo-admin] source_profile = jonsmith role_arn = arn:aws:iam::22222222222:role/Administrator mfa_serial = arn:aws:iam::111111111111:mfa/jonsmith [profile bar-role1] source_profile = jonsmith role_arn = arn:aws:iam::333333333333:role/Role1 mfa_serial = arn:aws:iam::111111111111:mfa/jonsmith [profile bar-role2] source_profile = bar-role1 role_arn = arn:aws:iam::333333333333:role/Role2 mfa_serial = arn:aws:iam::111111111111:mfa/jonsmith Here's what you can expect from aws-vault Command Credentials Cached MFA aws-vault exec jonsmith --no-session Long-term credentials No No aws-vault exec jonsmith session-token session-token Yes aws-vault exec foo-readonly role No No aws-vault exec foo-admin session-token + role session-token Yes aws-vault exec foo-admin --duration=2h role role Yes aws-vault exec bar-role2 session-token + role + role session-token Yes aws-vault exec bar-role2 --no-session role + role role Yes Development The macOS release builds are code-signed to avoid extra prompts in Keychain. You can verify this with: $ codesign --verify --verbose $(which aws-vault) If you are developing or compiling the aws-vault binary yourself, you can generate a self-signed certificate by accessing Keychain Access > Certificate Assistant > Create Certificate -> Certificate Type: Code Signing. You can then sign your binary with: $ go build . $ codesign --sign <Name of certificate created above> ./aws-vault References and Inspiration https://github.com/pda/aws-keychain https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/MFAProtectedAPI.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/IAMBestPractices.html#create-iam-users https://github.com/makethunder/awsudo https://github.com/AdRoll/hologram https://github.com/realestate-com-au/credulous https://gith
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

31 sources
I don't know how anyone could know if their tool is overlooked, but these threads are always "happy 10,000 day" fodder <https://xkcd.com/1053/> so I'll roll the dice - aws-vault https://github.com/99designs/aws-vault - often paired with the "open in container" Firefox extension (even if you use Chrome for everything else it's still great for color coding your account's "severity rating" to cut down on misclicks) https://github.com/honsiorovskyi/open-url-in-container and https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/open-url-in-contain... ; the $(aws-vault login --region $AWS_REGION --stdout "$my_profile_name") will emit the URL to login to the AWS console via their Federated Login behavior, then if one URL-encodes that and feeds it to $(firefox "ext+container:name=${con_name}&url=$url_enc") poof, it spawns the console authenticated with that a
Read the rest
ws-vault profile - teamocil https://github.com/remi/teamocil#readme - gojq which has just vastly superior error messages and yaml input https://github.com/itchyny/gojq - org-mode, worth it even if you're not already in Emacs https://org-mode.org - the 1Password cli's $(op inject) option for putting creds into files or env vars without really putting them in env vars e.g. https://developer.1password.com/docs/cli/secrets-environment...
In What Are the Most Underrated Tools You Use Every Day?
Nice! Do I understand this correctly? You use aws-vault(https://github.com/99designs/aws-vault) and configure it with IAM and MFA with YubiKeys. You configure e.g. the profile jonsmith. When you run aws-vault exec jonsmith -- aws s3 ls it will ask you, e.g. every hour to confirm with YubiKeys and cache the key for one hour. After that the temporary keys expire. Can you also store keys different from AWS?
In LastPass says DevOps engineer’s hacked computer led to security breach in 2022
Don't know about kube, but awscli and a few others decouple the idea of getting credentials and doing the actions. You can use the password directly through them every time, but a better way is to either use the preconfigured profile or some wrapper which does use the keychain. For example https://github.com/99designs/aws-vault/ supports one-off commands and shell sessions with pre-populated tokens. There's also similar cf-vault. Terraform also can be configured to use environment variables (and I'm sure other utilities) which allows similar "use a separate tool for creds" approach. (kube apparently has https://github.com/chrisns/kubectl-passman)
In Ask HN: Why most CLIs are not using keyring?
That's true, the simple & fast UI (TUI/GUI) helps a lot. However, I would not extrapolate it to a huge problem. I am person, who have written own pass/passage implementation [0], just because I disliked how many steps I need to make to select the password for the form input, modify it or sync secrets. Initially, I had used the `gopass`. It is probably the most convenient way to start using the password-store. It is cross-platform, 100% compatible with pass & pass-otp. To copy the password, you basically type the part of the file you are looking for. If you type "gopass show github", it will display a TUI, where you can select the file you are looking for (let's say you have two files "personal/github.com.gpg" and "work/github.com.gpg"). Unfortunately, the search function was far from perfect, and it had a problem with typos like "gtihbu"
Read the rest
at the time, when I was using it. To get rid of this issue, I decided to adapt pass/gopass to use `fzf` [2]. In the same time, my .password-store/ dir was rapidly growing that made me think about implementing pass from scratch. I improved the implementation to have better caching, synchronization between machines/mobile, but more importantly - a simple `secret [arg]` command that will execute `fzf` to list all known creds and simplify selection of the password. Of course, it accepted an argument that was limiting the results, which is great when you need to get back to the previous credential to retype something. The introduction of `fzf` made it really convenient, and I decided to add more commands with fuzzy search, such as: - `otp` - limits results files containing TOTP/HOTP token, calculates and copies it to the clipboard. - `secret-edit`, `secret-remove`, `secret-show`... aliases to sub-commands that open `fzf` command in multi-selection mode, so by utilizing space key I could select what files are meant to be modified, removed, displayed etc. Quite handy for mass-edit. - `secret-qr` - similar to the gopass' feature, but it made a simplified way to create and display QR codes dedicated to share contacts, WiFI SSID+password combination (etc.) to someone who was asking for creds from me. Awesome, but alt-tabbing to the terminal got me annoyed after a few years of using it that way. I started pursuing for more sophisticated interface. I decided to give `rofi` [3] a try. I managed to fork that repo and also adapt to my convention of using password-store, but I left i3 for a macOS. Currently, I have started working on a browser extension that takes care of suggesting password-store creds (based on the path, input parameters, location on the website etc.) similarly to what uBlock Origin does. That configuration is passed to my pass implementation, so on the github.com, my browser have only "work" and "personal" auto-suggestion, when I am focusing the text input. I plan to create a similar app to Shortcat [4], but it will preserve the information what credential has been asked for the focused app. I think, with VoiceOver assistance, it is more than possible to mitigate the need for alt-tabbing to the terminal for electron/native apps. [0]: It is a private repository, maybe when it will be polished enough I will open-source it. [1]: https://github.com/gopasspw/gopass [2]: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf [3]: https://github.com/alecdwm/pass-rofi-gui [4]: https://shortcat.app/ Edit: About the AWS login form. I strongly recommend giving `aws-vault` (https://github.com/99designs/aws-vault) a try. It helps you skip the login form with a simple command e.g.: "aws-vault login acme-corp --duration 2h". I find it better than `aws-mfa` on my dev machine.
In Pa – a simple password manager based on age
Ah, it's SAML-specific (https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/Nike-Inc/gimme-aws-creds/...) although the majority of BS4 seems to be about driving Okta not AWS: https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/Nike-Inc/gimme-aws-creds/... Yeah, SAML is, as far as I know, always headed. My copy of aws-vault is bright enough to launch against our AWS SSO provider(1), which secretly is also SAML to Okta, but I guess if your company's setup doesn't use AWS SSO then Nike must have thought parsing HTML to be The Solution&trade; 1: https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/99designs/aws-vault/-/blo...
In The State of AWS Security
For my dev machine's interactions with AWS, I use https://github.com/99designs/aws-vault You add the long lived IAM user API key/secret to it and it stores it in a password protected storage (MacOS keychain or similar). Then you invoke aws-vault with an IAM role and command, and it will handle obtaining short-lived credentials scoped to that role (including TOTP 2-factor code auth), and then run the command with those temporary credentials as env vars. With the right AWS permissions on your user, it can also automatically rotate the IAM user API keys for you.
In Billion-record stolen Chinese database for sale on breach forum
I'm a big fan of aws-vault [1], which helps securely store your tokens and use them to obtain temporary credentials which are time-limited and constrained to a specific IAM role. It's not as good as having something that supports a hardware token, of course, but it's better than the default awscli suggestion to keep the secrets around in plaintext either on disk or in env vars. [1] https://github.com/99designs/aws-vault
In AWS SIGv4 and SIGv4A – How AWS signs and verifies API requests

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