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I am trying to setup CloudFront to serve static files hosted in my S3 bucket. I have setup distribution but I get AccessDenied when trying to browse to the CSS (/CSS/stlyle.css) file inside S3 bucket:

<Error>
    <Code>AccessDenied</Code>
    <Message>Access Denied</Message>
    <RequestId>E193C9CDF4319589</RequestId>
    <HostId>
xbU85maj87/jukYihXnADjXoa4j2AMLFx7t08vtWZ9SRVmU1Ijq6ry2RDAh4G1IGPIeZG9IbFZg=
    </HostId>
</Error>

I have set my CloudFront distribution to my S3 bucket and created new Origin Access Identity policy which was added automatically to the S3 bucket:

{
    "Version": "2008-10-17",
    "Id": "PolicyForCloudFrontPrivateContent",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "1",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {
                "AWS": "arn:aws:iam::cloudfront:user/CloudFront Origin Access Identity E21XQ8NAGWMBQQ"
            },
            "Action": "s3:GetObject",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::myhost.com.cdn/*"
        }
    ]
}

Did I miss something?

I want all my files in this S3 bucket be served via CloudFront...

*** UPDATE ***

This cloud front guide says:

By default, your Amazon S3 bucket and all of the objects in it are private—only the AWS account that created the bucket has permission to read or write the objects in it. If you want to allow anyone to access the objects in your Amazon S3 bucket using CloudFront URLs, you must grant public read permissions to the objects. (This is one of the most common mistakes when working with CloudFront and Amazon S3. You must explicitly grant privileges to each object in an Amazon S3 bucket.)

So based on this I have added new permissions to all objects inside S3 bucket to Everyone Read/Download. Now I can access files.

But now when I access the file like https://d3u61axijg36on.cloudfront.net/css/style.css this is being redirected to S3 URI and HTTP. How do I disable this?

Nathan Hanna
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Primoz Rome
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  • The redirection might be temporary https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=677452 – moondaisy Feb 15 '17 at 17:10
  • I have come across that topic myself. Still waiting to see if this is the case... – Primoz Rome Feb 15 '17 at 17:22
  • Your update is the most confusing thing ever! Not a jab at you - more at amazon. Why must my objects be public if I have declared an OAI, changed the policy for that OAI, and have my bucket as private - as I want it to not be publicly accessible?! Makes no sense to me. Will they be private if the bucket is private and the objects are public? – Shmack May 02 '22 at 19:41

13 Answers13

93

To assist with your question, I recreated the situation via:

  • Created an Amazon S3 bucket with no Bucket Policy
  • Uploaded public.jpg and make it public via "Make Public"
  • Uploaded private.jpg and kept it private
  • Created an Amazon CloudFront web distribution:
    • Origin Domain Name: Selected my S3 bucket from the list
    • Restrict Bucket Access: Yes
    • Origin Access Identity: Create a New Identity
    • Grant Read Permissions on Bucket: Yes, Update Bucket Policy

I checked the bucket, and CloudFront had added a Bucket Policy similar to yours.

The distribution was marked as In Progress for a while. Once it said Enabled, I accessed the files via the xxx.cloudfront.net URL:

  • xxx.cloudfront.net/public.jpg redirected me to the S3 URL http://bucketname.s3.amazonaws.com/public.jpg. Yes, I could see the file, but it should not use a redirect.
  • xxx.cloudfront.net/private.jpg redirected me also, but I then received Access Denied because it is a private file in S3.

I then did some research and found that this is quite a common occurrence. Some people use a workaround by pointing their CloudFront distribution to the static hosted website URL, but this has the disadvantage that it will not work with the Origin Access Identity and I also suspect it won't receive the 'free S3 traffic to the edge' discount.

So, I waited overnight, tested it this morning and everything is working fine.

Bottom line: Even if it says ENABLED, things might take several hours (eg overnight) to get themselves right. It will then work as documented.

John Rotenstein
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    What wasn't obvious to me is that the cloudfront url does NOT include the bucket name. i.e. 'xxxx.cloudfront.net/:path' and NOT 'xxxx.cloudfront.net/bucketname/:path' – andrewcockerham Jul 26 '17 at 13:06
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    If I could have upvoted this twice, I would have. This stuff has cost me hours of my life. – Imre_G Nov 29 '17 at 18:16
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    @john-rotenstein I'm not following your answer. If I make objects in my bucket public, I can access them via my CloudFront distribution URL. That's great! But I can also then access them directly via the S3 URL. I implemented an OAI so that only my CloudFront dist can read my objects and no one else can. I don't understand the use of that if my objects are public. Have I misunderstood your answer? Can I provide any more information to clarify my question? – Shea Dec 29 '17 at 07:37
  • @shea -- This is an old question. If you have something to ask, please create a new question rather than asking in a comment. – John Rotenstein Dec 29 '17 at 08:21
  • @Shea I'm learning CloudFront and came to the same doubt.... AWS docs does mention that S3 objects have to be made public for CloudFront to work (in addition to policy/ACL permission grant to OAI), though it doesn't explain why. From my experiment, it seems that setting bucket permission to deny action "s3:GetObject" does prevent access to resources through S3 URL, without affecting CloudFront's ability to access bucket. However, I haven't figure out is GetObject the only effect of "make public", i.e. is there any other actions that need to be included in the rule to nullify "make public". – shiouming Mar 21 '19 at 11:48
  • I'm getting another behaviour different from my earlier comment. Previously, I was getting permission denied (via CloudFront) if I didn't set objects as public on S3. Now... after few hours, when testing with few more objects, it works even if I don't set them as public. I'm afraid info in the docs is outdated, hope the behaviour will be consistent. – shiouming Mar 21 '19 at 15:54
  • I had to wait 3 hr for the 403 error to clear out. Hell, I wonder if there's anything you can do to speed the process up. I can't imagine what I would have felt if my resource was critical to prod. – 10110 Oct 24 '19 at 04:43
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    If you see that cloudfront is redirecting you to the s3 asset (check your url after entering the cloudfront domain), then this (waiting a few hours) is very likely the solution. – Aaron Oct 08 '20 at 15:18
  • Waiting a few hours for private content to appear using Cloudfront OAI + S3 works!! This is the best answer. In my case, I waited for about 2-3 hours. It is indeed weird that there is this difference in behavior between public and private image. I think Cloudfront should not indicate the distribution as `enabled` before enabling the private content access too. – addicted Jan 17 '21 at 11:09
  • "So, I waited overnight, tested it this morning and everything is working fine." — As sad as it is, waiting did solve the issue... – Adam Eri Apr 26 '22 at 07:50
  • index.html in Default Root Object use this and it will work – Rahul Jain Nov 02 '22 at 09:20
81

I added index.html in Default Root Object under General tab of cloudFront Distribution Settings and it worked for me. As index.html was the root file for my project!

Zohab Ali
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    bless you. I was pulling my hair out on this, and adding the root object fixed it! – Maximus Jul 25 '19 at 03:55
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    This is the thing to check if the S3 bucket endpoint is using API-style. Even though it says "Access Denied", it's not truly a permissions error - it's that you're asking for a resource that doesn't technically exist. – Yu Chen Nov 11 '19 at 16:50
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    make sure it's `index.html` NOT `/index.html` – smbl Jul 14 '20 at 02:05
  • This worked for me. Even though this file was specified under S3, it was needed here too. – jewkesy Aug 21 '20 at 09:51
  • I banged my head for a whole day until I saw your answer. Thank you! – guzmonne Oct 01 '20 at 21:36
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    These are things that keep suggesting me "leave all this stuff and go farming". – Jumpa May 07 '21 at 13:09
  • Does index.html actually have the list of objects in the bucket or am I being too optimistic? – Stefan Aug 10 '21 at 16:53
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    Wow, life saver. And make sure to be patient. It took about 30 seconds for things to propagate or whatever needed to happen for it to work (which is why I originally thought setting this "optional" field wasn't a fix), but yes, telling it that the `index.html` is the Default Root Object fixed it for me. – Adam Oct 20 '21 at 23:04
  • Great !. Worked for me – jfk Jan 19 '22 at 09:25
  • Thanks you so much bro you are live saver – Saurabh Gangamwar Dec 17 '22 at 17:02
26

Instead of choosing default s3 bucket for Origin Domain Name, please enter the <bucket-name>.s3-website.<region>.amazonaws.com as origin Domain Name(You can get this URL at Static website hosting property under S3 bucket properties).

uday reddy
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4

In my case I was using multiple origins with "Path Pattern" Behaviors along with an Origin Path in my S3 bucket:

Bad setup:

CloudFront Behavior: /images/* -> My-S3-origin

My-S3-origin: Origin Path: /images

S3 files: /images/my-image.jpg

GET Request: /images/my-image.jpg -> 403

What was happening was the entire CloudFront GET request gets sent to the origin: /image/my-image.jpg prefixed by Origin Path: /images, so the request into S3 looks like /images/images/my-image.jpg which doesn't exist.

Solution

remove Origin Path.

Scott Jungwirth
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  • If anyone has this issue, consider clearing your cdn cache change bucket policy "it will be updated if you go from empty to /xy origin name... – Ayoub Bousetta Aug 31 '22 at 12:26
4

As an AWS novice, I encountered a similar problem after following a tutorial to set up a public S3 bucket. I wanted my S3 bucket to be private and have CloudFront serve the files. I set up an OAI and turned on Block all public access, only to receive AccessDenied errors on all my CloudFront URLs.

My problem was that I had created two conflicting statements in my S3 bucket policy: one when I set up the public bucket following the tutorial, and the other that was generated automatically when I set up the OAI and selected Update bucket policy:

{
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Id": "Policy1620442091089",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "Stmt1620442087873",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": "*",
            "Action": "s3:GetObject",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::my-s3-bucket/*"
        },
        {
            "Sid": "2",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {
                "AWS": "arn:aws:iam::cloudfront:user/CloudFront Origin Access Identity XXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
            },
            "Action": "s3:GetObject",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::my-s3-bucket/*"
        }
    ]
}

Removing the top statement solved my AccessDenied errors. Hopefully this helps someone new to AWS. It wasn't immediately obvious to me to check for conflicting statements.

3

This can happen if you are using a bucket that has just been newly created.

According official reply here: AWS Forun link, you have to wait for a couple of hours after creating a new bucket before you can have cloud front distribution working on it correctly.

Solution is to temporarily work from one of your old buckets and switch to the new bucket a couple of hours later.

Suresh
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1

I also got 403 from CloudFront but my issue was a bit different so sharing it here as it might help others.

Make sure the Origin Access Id you've defined as part of the bucket policy is the right one:

{
    "Version": "2008-10-17",
    "Id": "PolicyForCloudFrontPrivateContent",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "1",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {
                "AWS": "arn:aws:iam::cloudfront:user/CloudFront Origin Access Identity HERE_GOES_YOUR_ORIGIN_ACCESS_ID"
            },
            "Action": "s3:GetObject",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::deepen-frontend-prod/*"
        }
    ]
}

An Origin Access Identity Id roughly looks like E19F48VV5H01ZD.

You can find all of your origin access identities on https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/home#oai Look for the one you're using in your CloudFront config under Your Identities: enter image description here

Sahar
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See 100% working solution...

It can be only solve at cloudFront panel by adding error response rule.

See Solution here - react router doesn't work in aws s3 bucket

Kaushal Sachan
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add this in Bucket policy

    {
        "Sid": "2",
        "Effect": "Allow",
        "Principal": {
            "AWS": "arn:aws:iam::cloudfront:user/CloudFront Origin Access Identity ESDK2T2CSNT57"
        },
        "Action": "s3:GetObject",
        "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::{Bucket name }/*"
    }
xpredo
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Making the objects in the S3 bucket public-read is the fastest way to achieve this. However this is not recommended. Rather create a origin_access_identity under the s3 orgin policy and grant this identity access to the S3 bucket using a bucket policy. That way you can keep all the objects private.

Mohit Mutha
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It worked for me once I added index.html to the Default Root Object under the General tab of cloudFront Distribution Settings.

0

You can point cloud front to use s3 bucket or you can host your s3 bucket as a static website and point Cloud Front to a Static website URL.

  1. When you are pointing CloudFront to s3 bucket

    • I used OAI as prescribed here. It works for me.

enter image description here

enter image description here

enter image description here

  • However, please note that you cannot access the root without mentioning a root document.

  • append /existingfile.html to url and see whether you can access any document by full url. If not you need check your permissions issues mostly at s3 bucket. Follow above URL.

  • you need to provide a default root document (index.html or something like that).. Otherwise, your root will be denied access.

  1. When you want to use s3 the static website. Do not choose S3 origin from the available list. Rather copy and paste S3 static root. In this case, the Origin has to be the exact URI given in the Static website hosting of the bucket. NOTE that This is different from the list very similar bucket name given in options while creating cloud front distribution.

Before creating a cloud front distribution make sure the website is working via this URL.

enter image description here

Sandeep Dixit
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For me using OAC and adding the policy for a bucket with disabled public access did not work. I followed all the tutorials and checked every possible problem. The only thing that helped was using a legacy OAI setting, instead of OAC as aws suggests

Daria Kharlan
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