Introducing a new console experience for AWS WAF

You can now use the updated experience to access AWS WAF functionality anywhere in the console. For more details, see Working with the updated console experience.

How AWS WAF Classic works with IAM

Before you use IAM to manage access to AWS WAF Classic, learn what IAM features are available to use with AWS WAF Classic.

To get a high-level view of how AWS WAF Classic and other AWS services work with most IAM features, see AWS services that work with IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Identity-based policies for AWS WAF Classic

Supports identity-based policies: Yes

Identity-based policies are JSON permissions policy documents that you can attach to an identity, such as an IAM user, group of users, or role. These policies control what actions users and roles can perform, on which resources, and under what conditions. To learn how to create an identity-based policy, see Define custom IAM permissions with customer managed policies in the IAM User Guide.

With IAM identity-based policies, you can specify allowed or denied actions and resources as well as the conditions under which actions are allowed or denied. To learn about all of the elements that you can use in a JSON policy, see IAM JSON policy elements reference in the IAM User Guide.

To view examples of AWS WAF Classic identity-based policies, see Identity-based policy examples for AWS WAF Classic.

Resource-based policies within AWS WAF Classic

Supports resource-based policies: No

Resource-based policies are JSON policy documents that you attach to a resource. Examples of resource-based policies are IAM role trust policies and Amazon S3 bucket policies. In services that support resource-based policies, service administrators can use them to control access to a specific resource. For the resource where the policy is attached, the policy defines what actions a specified principal can perform on that resource and under what conditions. You must specify a principal in a resource-based policy. Principals can include accounts, users, roles, federated users, or AWS services.

To enable cross-account access, you can specify an entire account or IAM entities in another account as the principal in a resource-based policy. For more information, see Cross account resource access in IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Policy actions for AWS WAF Classic

Supports policy actions: Yes

Administrators can use AWS JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Action element of a JSON policy describes the actions that you can use to allow or deny access in a policy. Include actions in a policy to grant permissions to perform the associated operation.

To see a list of AWS WAF Classic actions, see Actions defined by AWS WAF and Actions defined by AWS WAF Regional in the Service Authorization Reference.

Policy actions in AWS WAF Classic use the following prefix before the action:

waf

To specify multiple actions in a single statement, separate them with commas.

"Action": [
      "waf:action1",
      "waf:action2"
         ]

You can specify multiple actions using wildcards (*). For example, to specify all actions in AWS WAF Classic that begin with List, include the following action:

"Action": "waf:List*"

To view examples of AWS WAF Classic identity-based policies, see Identity-based policy examples for AWS WAF Classic.

Policy resources for AWS WAF Classic

Supports policy resources: Yes

Administrators can use AWS JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Resource JSON policy element specifies the object or objects to which the action applies. As a best practice, specify a resource using its Amazon Resource Name (ARN). For actions that don't support resource-level permissions, use a wildcard (*) to indicate that the statement applies to all resources.

"Resource": "*"

To see the list of AWS WAF Classic resource types and their ARNs, see Resources defined by AWS WAF and Resources defined by AWS WAF Regional in the Service Authorization Reference. To learn with which actions you can specify the ARN of each resource, see Actions defined by AWS WAF and Actions defined by AWS WAF Regional. To allow or deny access to a subset of AWS WAF Classic resources, include the ARN of the resource in the resource element of your policy.

In AWS WAF Classic, the resources are web ACLs and rules. AWS WAF Classic also supports conditions such as byte match, IP match, and size constraint.

These resources and conditions have unique Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) associated with them, as shown in the following table.

To allow or deny access to a subset of AWS WAF Classic resources, include the ARN of the resource in the resource element of your policy. The ARNs for AWS WAF Classic have the following format:

arn:aws:waf::account:resource/ID

Replace the account, resource, and ID variables with valid values. Valid values can be the following:

For example, the following ARN specifies all web ACLs for the account 111122223333:

arn:aws:waf::111122223333:webacl/*

Policy condition keys for AWS WAF Classic

Supports service-specific policy condition keys: Yes

Administrators can use AWS JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Condition element specifies when statements execute based on defined criteria. You can create conditional expressions that use condition operators, such as equals or less than, to match the condition in the policy with values in the request. To see all AWS global condition keys, see AWS global condition context keys in the IAM User Guide.

To see a list of AWS WAF Classic condition keys, see Condition keys for AWS WAF and Resources defined by AWS WAF Regional in the Service Authorization Reference. To learn with which actions and resources you can use a condition key, see Actions defined by AWS WAF and Actions defined by AWS WAF Regional.

To view examples of AWS WAF Classic identity-based policies, see Identity-based policy examples for AWS WAF Classic.

ACLs in AWS WAF Classic

Supports ACLs: No

Access control lists (ACLs) control which principals (account members, users, or roles) have permissions to access a resource. ACLs are similar to resource-based policies, although they do not use the JSON policy document format.

ABAC with AWS WAF Classic

Supports ABAC (tags in policies): Partial

Attribute-based access control (ABAC) is an authorization strategy that defines permissions based on attributes called tags. You can attach tags to IAM entities and AWS resources, then design ABAC policies to allow operations when the principal's tag matches the tag on the resource.

To control access based on tags, you provide tag information in the condition element of a policy using the aws:ResourceTag/key-name, aws:RequestTag/key-name, or aws:TagKeys condition keys.

If a service supports all three condition keys for every resource type, then the value is Yes for the service. If a service supports all three condition keys for only some resource types, then the value is Partial.

For more information about ABAC, see Define permissions with ABAC authorization in the IAM User Guide. To view a tutorial with steps for setting up ABAC, see Use attribute-based access control (ABAC) in the IAM User Guide.

Using temporary credentials with AWS WAF Classic

Supports temporary credentials: Yes

Temporary credentials provide short-term access to AWS resources and are automatically created when you use federation or switch roles. AWS recommends that you dynamically generate temporary credentials instead of using long-term access keys. For more information, see Temporary security credentials in IAM and AWS services that work with IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Forward access sessions for AWS WAF Classic

Supports forward access sessions (FAS): Yes

Forward access sessions (FAS) use the permissions of the principal calling an AWS service, combined with the requesting AWS service to make requests to downstream services. For policy details when making FAS requests, see Forward access sessions.

Service roles for AWS WAF Classic

Supports service roles: Yes

A service role is an IAM role that a service assumes to perform actions on your behalf. An IAM administrator can create, modify, and delete a service role from within IAM. For more information, see Create a role to delegate permissions to an AWS service in the IAM User Guide.

Service-linked roles for AWS WAF Classic

Supports service-linked roles: Yes

A service-linked role is a type of service role that is linked to an AWS service. The service can assume the role to perform an action on your behalf. Service-linked roles appear in your AWS account and are owned by the service. An IAM administrator can view, but not edit the permissions for service-linked roles.

For details about creating or managing AWS WAF Classic service-linked roles, see Using service-linked roles for AWS WAF Classic.