When I try to login using AWS Cognito I get an AccessDeniedException about my custom Lambda trigger

Question

I am calling adminInitiateAuth and getting back a strange AccessDeniedException for my own lambdas.

Here is the code I'm calling:

      var params = {
        AuthFlow: "ADMIN_NO_SRP_AUTH",
        ClientId: "@cognito_client_id@",
        UserPoolId: "@cognito_pool_id@",
        AuthParameters: {
          USERNAME : username,
          PASSWORD : tempPassword
        },
      };
      cognitoIdentityServiceProvider.adminInitiateAuth(params, function(error, data) {
        if (error) {
          console.log("ERROR! Login failed: " + JSON.stringify(error), error.stack);
        } else {
          console.log("Login sent back: " + JSON.stringify(data));
        }
      });

The error message I'm getting is:

ERROR! Login failed: {"message":"arn:aws:lambda:us-east-1:201473124518:function:main-devryan-users_onCognitoLogin failed with error AccessDeniedException.","code":"UnexpectedLambdaException","time":"2017-02-25T18:54:15.109Z","requestId":"ce42833f-fb8b-11e6-929b-2f78b63faa12","statusCode":400,"retryable":false,"retryDelay":1.0853444458916783} UnexpectedLambdaException: arn:aws:lambda:us-east-1:201473124518:function:main-devryan-users_onCognitoLogin failed with error AccessDeniedException.

Does anybody know why I might be getting this error?

Answer 1

This was happening because I recreated my API Gateway & Lambdas (using serverless) and it turns out that the Cognito console sneakily adds permissions to contact a given Lambda function when added as a trigger through the console.

---

To fix this in your CloudFormation / serverless.yml file:

resources:
  Resources:
    OnCognitoSignupPermission:
      Type: 'AWS::Lambda::Permission'
      Properties:
        Action: "lambda:InvokeFunction"
        FunctionName:
          Fn::GetAtt: [ "UsersUnderscoreonCognitoSignupLambdaFunction", "Arn"]
        Principal: "cognito-idp.amazonaws.com"
        SourceArn:
          Fn::Join: [ "", [ "arn:aws:cognito-idp", ":", Ref: "AWS::Region", ":", Ref: "AWS::AccountId", ":", "userpool/", "@cognito_pool_id@" ] ]

---

To fix this in the AWS console:

• Go to the Cognito Console
• Choose your user pool
• Go to "Triggers"
• Remove your custom trigger (set it to None) and click "Save"
• Now reset it back and click "Save" again

Here's an interesting Amazon forum post that led me down the right track.