ssm-connect

ssm-connect is a small command line utility that attempts to ease the process of connecting to AWS instances via ssm.

Installation

Clone the repository and from within the repository directory, type make build. This will create a directory with the given value of GOOS and install the binary there. It will also create a tarball which will eventually be used for Homebrew formulae.

Features

Gets the credentials from ~/.aws/credentials -- nothing to configure.
Notifies you if you need to first install the session-manager-plugin.

How does it work?

ssm-connect parses the ~/.aws/credentials file and creates a list of profiles.
The profile list is displayed on screen and the user is asked to select a profile.
Once the profile is selected, ssm-connect reads the config to get the token information for the specified profile.
Once the credentials are parsed, ssm-connect connects to the account and gathers a list of running instances.
The list of running instances is used to build a second menu and the user is asked to select an instance to connect to.
Once the instance has been selected, session-manager-plugin is invoked with the correct parameters and the shell is connected.

ssm-connect runtime options

$ ssm-connect --help
Usage:
  ssm-connect [OPTIONS]

Application Options:
  -r, --region=  Specify a region.
  -V, --version  Display version information and exit.

Help Options:
  -h, --help     Show this help message

CloudTrail Events

When the user uses ssm-connect to connect to an instance, the username and the ssm-connect version are logged to CloudTrail. This is for accountability. Here is a snippet from the event:

  "eventTime": "2024-06-26T23:16:06Z",
  "eventSource": "ssm.amazonaws.com",
  "eventName": "StartSession",
  "awsRegion": "us-west-2",
  "sourceIPAddress": "1.2.3.4",
  "userAgent": "aws-sdk-go/1.44.307 (go1.20.5; darwin; arm64)",
  "requestParameters": {
      "target": "i-04827860f68c6dbfa",
      "documentName": "SSM-SessionManagerRunShell",
      "reason": "gdanko connected via ssm-connect version 0.2.1 (https://github.com/gdanko/ssm-connect)"
  },