You are responsible for keeping your AWS credentials Safe & Secure.
If you do not keep your credentials Safe & Secure, for example if you upload them to your GitHub account, then Bad Guys will find them.
In fact, the Bad Guys are continuously scanning for credentials everywhere and will find them almost immediately as soon as they are exposed.
Then the Bad Guys will take over all available resources and drain them until they are discovered to be stealing resources and we can revoke your stolen credentials and kick out the Bad Guys.
They might even destroy your homework.
If you think your credentials have been exposed, please tell us right away at aws-support@stat.berkeley.edu so that we can immediately revoke the credentials to keep the bad guys out of the system.
Your credentials come in two files with the following suffixes in their name:
- -credentials.boto
- -ssh_key.pem
- Only download your credential files to your local machine
- Do not send your credentials via email
- Do NOT upload your credentials (even in encrypted form) to GitHub, Bitbucket, Dropbox, Google Drive, or any other remote location.
- Don't share your credentials with anybody else, even temporarily.
- Do not make a copy or snapshot of your VM (Virtual Machine) to share with others because your credentials will also be copied along with the rest of the VM image.
If you've uploaded your credentials somewhere or exposed them somehow, whether because you didn't know better, you didn't think the Bad Guys would find them, or you just made a mistake then...
Don't worry!
Just be responsible by letting us know right away at aws-support@stat.berkeley.edu so that we can immediately revoke the credentials to keep the bad guys out of the system.
If you'd like to know more about security, you're welcome to explore more details in SECURITY Part II.