Amazon S3 Signature Does Not Match - AWS SDK Java

I have a play application that needs to upload files to S3. We are developing in scala and using the Java AWS SDK.

I'm having trouble trying to upload files, I keep getting 403 SignatureDoesNotMatch when using presigned urls. The url is being genereated using AWS Java SDK by the following code:

def generatePresignedPutRequest(filename: String) = {
    val expiration = new java.util.Date();
    var msec = expiration.getTime() + 1000 * 60 * 60; // Add 1 hour.
    expiration.setTime(msec);

    s3 match {
      case Some(s3) => s3.generatePresignedUrl(bucketname, filename, expiration, HttpMethod.PUT).toString
      case None => {
        Logger.warn("S3 is not availiable. Cannot generate PUT request.")
        "URL not availiable"
      }
    }
  }

For the frontend code we followed ioncannon article.

The js function that uploads the file (the same as the one used in the article)

 function uploadToS3(file, url)
     {
       var xhr = createCORSRequest('PUT', url);
       if (!xhr) 
       {
         setProgress(0, 'CORS not supported');
       }
       else
       {
         xhr.onload = function() 
         {
           if(xhr.status == 200)
           {
             setProgress(100, 'Upload completed.');
           }
           else
           {
             setProgress(0, 'Upload error: ' + xhr.status);
           }
         };

         xhr.onerror = function() 
         {
           setProgress(0, 'XHR error.');
         };

         xhr.upload.onprogress = function(e) 
         {
           if (e.lengthComputable) 
           {
             var percentLoaded = Math.round((e.loaded / e.total) * 100);
             setProgress(percentLoaded, percentLoaded == 100 ? 'Finalizing.' : 'Uploading.');
           }
         };

         xhr.setRequestHeader('Content-Type', 'image/png');
         xhr.setRequestHeader('x-amz-acl', 'authenticated-read');

         xhr.send(file);
       }
     }

The server's response is

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Error><Code>SignatureDoesNotMatch</Code>
<Message>The request signature we calculated does not match the signature you provided. Check your key and signing method.</Message>
<StringToSignBytes>50 55 bla bla bla...</StringToSignBytes>
<RequestId>F7A8F1659DE5909C</RequestId>
<HostId>q+r+2T5K6mWHLKTZw0R9/jm22LyIfZFBTY8GEDznfmJwRxvaVJwPiu/hzUfuJWbW</HostId>
<StringToSign>PUT

    image/png
    1387565829
    x-amz-acl:authenticated-read
    /mybucketname/icons/f5430c16-32da-4315-837f-39a6cf9f47a1</StringToSign>
<AWSAccessKeyId>myaccesskey</AWSAccessKeyId></Error>

I have configured CORS, double checked aws credentials and tried changing request headers. I always get the same result. Why is Amazon telling me that signatures dont match?

javascript amazon-web-services amazon-s3
Kaden

Answers 1

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  • Petra

    Doubt the OP still has a problem with this, but for anyone else who runs into this, here is the answer:

    When making a signed request to S3, AWS checks to make sure that the signature exactly matches the HTTP Header information the browser sent. This is unfortunately required reading: http://s3.amazonaws.com/doc/s3-developer-guide/RESTAuthentication.html

    However in the code above this is not actually the case, the Javascript is sending:

    xhr.setRequestHeader('Content-Type', 'image/png');
xhr.setRequestHeader('x-amz-acl', 'authenticated-read');

    But in the Java/Scala, s3.generatePresignedUrl is being called without passing in either of them. So the resulting signature is actually telling S3 to reject anything with a Content-Type or x-ams-acl header set. Oops (I fell for it too).

    I've seen browsers send Content-Types automatically, so even if they're not explicitly added to the header they could still be coming into S3. So the question is, how do we add Content-Type and x-amz-acl headers into the signature?

    There are several overloaded generatePresignedUrl functions in the AWS SDK, but only one of them allows us to pass in anything else besides the bucket-name, filename, expiration-date and http-method.

    The solution is:

    1. Create a GeneratePresignedUrlRequest object, with your bucket and filename.
    2. Call setExpiration, setContentType, etc, to set all of your header info on it.
    3. Pass that into s3.generatePresignedUrl as the only parameter.

    Here's the proper function definition of GeneratePresignedUrlRequest to use:

    http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSJavaSDK/latest/javadoc/com/amazonaws/services/s3/AmazonS3Client.html#generatePresignedUrl(com.amazonaws.services.s3.model.GeneratePresignedUrlRequest)

    The function's code on the AWS GitHub repo was also helpful for me to see how to code up the solution. Hope this helps.

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