Secrets should not be passed as container environment variables

Severity: High

Resource Types: AWS::ECS::TaskDefinition

Description

This control checks if the key value of any variables in the environment parameter of container definitions includes AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, or ECS_ENGINE_AUTH_DATA. This control fails if a single environment variable in any container definition equals AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, or ECS_ENGINE_AUTH_DATA. This control does not cover environmental variables passed in from other locations such as Amazon S3.

AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store can help you improve the security posture of your organization. We recommend using the Parameter Store to store secrets and credentials instead of directing passing them into your container instances or hard coding them into your code.

Remediation

To create parameters using SSM, see Creating Systems Manager parametersin the AWS Systems Manager User Guide. For more information about creating a task definition that specifies a secret, see Specifying sensitive data using Secrets Manager in the Amazon Elastic Container Service Developer Guide.