# Amazon Cognito

## Amazon Cognito overview

Amazon Cognito provides authentication, authorization, and user management for customer's web and mobile applications. Users can sign in directly with a user name and password, or through a third party such as Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, or enterprise identity providers via SAML 2.0 and OpenID Connect.

The two main components of Amazon Cognito are `user pools` and `identity pools`. `User pools` are user directories that provide sign-up and sign-in options for application users. `Identity pools` enable developers to grant users access to other AWS services.

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### How does Amazon Cognito work?

![](https://3225913148-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2F-M1LVsv044FMDdyLjX-C%2Fuploads%2Fgit-blob-553029ab99807202104cd7c80a6815a9f59d752c%2Fscenario-cup-cib2.png?alt=media\&token=5dcdc5dd-96ae-496c-b8c4-ca0cd728121f)

1. An user signs in through a `user pool` and receives user pool tokens (JWT tokens) after a successful authentication
2. An application exchanges the user pool tokens for AWS credentials through an `identity pool`
3. The user can use the AWS credentials to access other AWS services such as Amazon S3 or DynamoDB

## Security issues

### Leakage identity pool ID

Identity pool ID allows you to fetch temporary AWS credentials that may have extra AWS permissions. As a result, it may be possible to get unauthenticated access to sensitive AWS services.

Identity pool IDs can be stored client-side, for example within JavaScript, or returned in a response.

References:

* [Appsecco blog: Exploiting weak configurations in Amazon Cognito](https://blog.appsecco.com/exploiting-weak-configurations-in-amazon-cognito-in-aws-471ce761963)
* [Write up: Hacking AWS Cognito Misconfigurations](https://notsosecure.com/hacking-aws-cognito-misconfigurations)

### Misconfigured user pool access

If an application allows writing user attributes of an internally used AWS user pool, it can be used to abuse the trust between the application and the pool. In other words, it is possible to change the attributes and issue the JWT token, that will be used by an application. For instance, if an application uses normalized emails (in lower case), you can change one letter in an email address to an upper-case equivalent and takeover an account.

References:

* [Write up: Flickr Account Takeover](https://security.lauritz-holtmann.de/advisories/flickr-account-takeover/)

## References

* [Whitepaper: Internet-Scale analysis of AWS Cognito Security](https://andresriancho.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/whitepaper-internet-scale-analysis-of-aws-cognito-security.pdf)