The AWS Instance Metadata Service (IMDS) endpoint at http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials/ allows EC2 instances to retrieve temporary, auto-rotated IAM security credentials, eliminating the need to hardcode long-term keys. While IMDSv1 is susceptible to Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) attacks, AWS strongly advises adopting IMDSv2 to enforce session-oriented authentication and mitigate credential theft risks. For official technical steps, refer to the AWS User Guide on retrieving credentials .
: This is a link-local IP address used by AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud to provide metadata about the virtual machine. The AWS Instance Metadata Service (IMDS) endpoint at
/latest/meta-data/ is part of the path used to access metadata about the instance. auto-rotated IAM security credentials