Unable to authenticate aws iot subscribe through node sdk

Question

I need to integrate a AWS IOT based MQTT Service. Some other developer already setup the MQTT and give me the aws account credentials. They also gave us two topics name. one for publishing data other for subscribing for getting status data.

For testing purpose I created a device into AWS IOT Panel and it give me the node iot sdk download. Which I setup on local machine. Then I playing with device-example script in examples folder. I modify aws policy attached with my device for allow to access two topics one for publish and one for subscribe.

But all this failed. Script given following output.

connect
offline
close
reconnect
connect
offline
close

and so on..

When I checked in AWS CloudWatch Logs for IOT I got issue.

{ 
 "timestamp": "2018-10-25 07:13:10.056", 
 "logLevel": "ERROR", 
 "traceId": "TRACEID", 
 "accountId": "ACCOUNTID", 
 "status": "Failure", 
 "eventType": "Subscribe", 
 "protocol": "MQTT", 
 "topicName": "status topic name", 
 "clientId": "sdk-nodejs-uuid",
 "principalId": "clientid", 
 "sourceIp": "IP", 
 "sourcePort": PORT, 
 "reason": "AUTHORIZATION_FAILURE" 
}

My changed policy are

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
    "iot:Publish",
    "iot:Receive"
      ],
      "Resource": [
    "arn:aws:iot:us-east-2:clientid:topic/publish-topic-name"
      ]
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
    "iot:Subscribe",
    "iot:Receive"
      ],
      "Resource": [
    "arn:aws:iot:us-east-2:clientid:topic/subscribe-topic-name"
      ]
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
    "iot:Connect"
      ],
      "Resource": [
    "arn:aws:iot:us-east-2:clientid:client/sdk-nodejs-*",
    "arn:aws:iot:us-east-2:clientid:topic/publish-topic-name",
    "arn:aws:iot:us-east-2:clientid:topic/subscribe-topic-name"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Then I even gave all iot permission for all topics but still get authentication error

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
    "iot:*"
      ],
      "Resource": [
    "arn:aws:iot:us-east-2:clientid:client/sdk-nodejs-*",
    "arn:aws:iot:us-east-2:clientid:topic/*"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

For publish I get only connect console output and also did not get any logs on cloud watch so I am not very sure if it succeed or not.

UPDATE: Ok i got the issue after some search and that is to add topicfilter along with topic in policy. It look like required for subscribe topics. Updated policy is below.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
    "iot:*"
      ],
      "Resource": [
    "arn:aws:iot:us-east-2:clientid:client/sdk-nodejs-*",
    "arn:aws:iot:us-east-2:clientid:topicfilter/*",
    "arn:aws:iot:us-east-2:clientid:topic/*"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

stijndepestel stijndepestel · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-25T12:09:49

Have you also configured an IoT policy? To connect to the IoT platform with an IAM user (MQTT over WSS), you do not only need an IAM policy which allows access, but also an IoT policy which does so. On top of this, you should check if your policies are using the correct resource identifier. There is a difference between how resources are defined for iot:publish versus iot:subscribe.

Unable to authenticate aws iot subscribe through node sdk

1 Answers