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How are my Amazon S3 credentials protected?

If you want us to store files in your S3 bucket, it is recommended to save the credentials in a Template in your account. We keep this Template encrypted in our database.

The keys needed to decrypt these are injected into process memory by another system user. This means that if someone was able to exploit the user under which we run our API or website processes, they could still not access the keys. If they tried to change our code to display or send the credentials, they would have to restart the service (not permitted under that user) and access the key files (also not permitted).

If our servers are rooted, it is a different story. This is why we use firewalls, use protected SSH keys, and limit our sudo, but as any expert will tell you, 100% security is a myth and it is better to prepare for the worst.

This is why we recommend to create IAM policies that only have Put and List permissions on your buckets (for an up to date and precise list of the required permissions, please check the S3 Store documentation), and let Transloadit use that for writing only. So if your credentials were ever stolen and the criminals managed to decrypt them as well - they would still only be able to add more files to this particular bucket, until we notice and intervene.

While, as said, 100% security is a myth, our security philosophy is to make it as hard as possible to for anyone to gain access to your credentials and the keys necessary to decrypt them, and if they do manage to acquire them, to make them as useless as possible.