Nuke a whole AWS account and delete all its resources.
Development Status aws-nuke is stable, but currently not all AWS resources are covered by it. Be encouraged to add missing resources and create a Pull Request or to create an Issue.
Be aware that aws-nuke is a very destructive tool, hence you have to be very careful while using it. Otherwise you might delete production data.
To reduce the blast radius of accidents, there are some safety precautions:
- By default aws-nuke only lists all nukeable resources. You need to add
--no-dry-runto actually delete resources. - aws-nuke asks you twice to confirm the deletion by entering the account alias. The first time is directly after the start and the second time after listing all nukeable resources.
- To avoid just displaying a account ID, which might gladly be ignored by humans, it is required to actually set an Account Alias for your account. Otherwise aws-nuke will abort.
- The Account Alias must not contain the string
prod. This string is hardcoded and it is recommended to add it to every actual production account (egmycompany-production-ecr). - The config file contains a blacklist field. If the Account ID of the account you want to nuke is part of this blacklist, aws-nuke will abort. It is recommended, that you add every production account to this blacklist.
- To ensure you don't just ignore the blacklisting feature, the blacklist must contain at least one Account ID.
- The config file contains account specific settings (eg. filters). The account you want to nuke must be explicitly listed there.
- To ensure to not accidentally delete a random account, it is required to specify a config file. It is recommended to have only a single config file and add it to a central repository. This way the account blacklist is way easier to manage and keep up to date.
Feel free to create an issue, if you have any ideas to improve the safety procedures.
- We are testing our Terraform code with Jenkins. Sometimes a Terraform run fails during development and messes up the account. With aws-nuke we can simply clean up the failed account so it can be reused for the next build.
- Our platform developers have their own AWS Accounts where they can create their own Kubernetes clusters for testing purposes. With aws-nuke it is very easy to clean up these account at the end of the day and keep the costs low.
At first you need to create a config file for aws-nuke. This is a minimal one:
regions:
- eu-west-1
account-blacklist:
- "999999999999" # production
accounts:
"000000000000": {} # aws-nuke-exampleWith this config we can run aws-nuke:
$ aws-nuke -c config/nuke-config.yml --profile aws-nuke-example
aws-nuke version v1.0.39.gc2f318f - Fri Jul 28 16:26:41 CEST 2017 - c2f318f37b7d2dec0e646da3d4d05ab5296d5bce
Do you really want to nuke the account with the ID 000000000000 and the alias 'aws-nuke-example'?
Do you want to continue? Enter account alias to continue.
> aws-nuke-example
eu-west-1 - EC2DHCPOption - 'dopt-bf2ec3d8' - would remove
eu-west-1 - EC2Instance - 'i-01b489457a60298dd' - would remove
eu-west-1 - EC2KeyPair - 'test' - would remove
eu-west-1 - EC2NetworkACL - 'acl-6482a303' - cannot delete default VPC
eu-west-1 - EC2RouteTable - 'rtb-ffe91e99' - would remove
eu-west-1 - EC2SecurityGroup - 'sg-220e945a' - cannot delete group 'default'
eu-west-1 - EC2SecurityGroup - 'sg-f20f958a' - would remove
eu-west-1 - EC2Subnet - 'subnet-154d844e' - would remove
eu-west-1 - EC2Volume - 'vol-0ddfb15461a00c3e2' - would remove
eu-west-1 - EC2VPC - 'vpc-c6159fa1' - would remove
eu-west-1 - IAMUserAccessKey - 'my-user -> ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST' - would remove
eu-west-1 - IAMUserPolicyAttachment - 'my-user -> AdministratorAccess' - [UserName: "my-user", PolicyArn: "arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AdministratorAccess", PolicyName: "AdministratorAccess"] - would remove
eu-west-1 - IAMUser - 'my-user' - would remove
Scan complete: 13 total, 11 nukeable, 2 filtered.
Would delete these resources. Provide --no-dry-run to actually destroy resources.
As we see, aws-nuke only lists all found resources and exits. This is because
the --no-dry-run flag is missing. Also it wants to delete the
administrator. We don't want to do this, because we use this user to access
our account. Therefore we have to extend the config so it ignores this user:
regions:
- eu-west-1
account-blacklist:
- "999999999999" # production
accounts:
"000000000000": # aws-nuke-example
filters:
IAMUser:
- "my-user"
IAMUserPolicyAttachment:
- "my-user -> AdministratorAccess"
IAMUserAccessKey:
- "my-user -> ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST"$ aws-nuke -c config/nuke-config.yml --profile aws-nuke-example --no-dry-run
aws-nuke version v1.0.39.gc2f318f - Fri Jul 28 16:26:41 CEST 2017 - c2f318f37b7d2dec0e646da3d4d05ab5296d5bce
Do you really want to nuke the account with the ID 000000000000 and the alias 'aws-nuke-example'?
Do you want to continue? Enter account alias to continue.
> aws-nuke-example
eu-west-1 - EC2DHCPOption - 'dopt-bf2ec3d8' - would remove
eu-west-1 - EC2Instance - 'i-01b489457a60298dd' - would remove
eu-west-1 - EC2KeyPair - 'test' - would remove
eu-west-1 - EC2NetworkACL - 'acl-6482a303' - cannot delete default VPC
eu-west-1 - EC2RouteTable - 'rtb-ffe91e99' - would remove
eu-west-1 - EC2SecurityGroup - 'sg-220e945a' - cannot delete group 'default'
eu-west-1 - EC2SecurityGroup - 'sg-f20f958a' - would remove
eu-west-1 - EC2Subnet - 'subnet-154d844e' - would remove
eu-west-1 - EC2Volume - 'vol-0ddfb15461a00c3e2' - would remove
eu-west-1 - EC2VPC - 'vpc-c6159fa1' - would remove
eu-west-1 - IAMUserAccessKey - 'my-user -> ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST' - filtered by config
eu-west-1 - IAMUserPolicyAttachment - 'my-user -> AdministratorAccess' - [UserName: "my-user", PolicyArn: "arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AdministratorAccess", PolicyName: "AdministratorAccess"] - would remove
eu-west-1 - IAMUser - 'my-user' - filtered by config
Scan complete: 13 total, 8 nukeable, 5 filtered.
Do you really want to nuke these resources on the account with the ID 000000000000 and the alias 'aws-nuke-example'?
Do you want to continue? Enter account alias to continue.
> aws-nuke-example
eu-west-1 - EC2DHCPOption - 'dopt-bf2ec3d8' - DependencyViolation: The dhcpOptions 'dopt-bf2ec3d8' has dependencies and cannot be deleted.
status code: 400, request id: 9665c066-6bb1-4643-9071-f03481f80d4e
eu-west-1 - EC2Instance - 'i-01b489457a60298dd' - triggered remove
eu-west-1 - EC2KeyPair - 'test' - triggered remove
eu-west-1 - EC2RouteTable - 'rtb-ffe91e99' - DependencyViolation: The routeTable 'rtb-ffe91e99' has dependencies and cannot be deleted.
status code: 400, request id: 3f667620-3207-4576-ae68-0b75261c0504
eu-west-1 - EC2SecurityGroup - 'sg-f20f958a' - DependencyViolation: resource sg-f20f958a has a dependent object
status code: 400, request id: 5da5819d-8df5-4ced-b88f-9028e93d3cee
eu-west-1 - EC2Subnet - 'subnet-154d844e' - DependencyViolation: The subnet 'subnet-154d844e' has dependencies and cannot be deleted.
status code: 400, request id: 237186aa-b035-4f64-a6e3-518bed64e240
eu-west-1 - EC2Volume - 'vol-0ddfb15461a00c3e2' - VolumeInUse: Volume vol-0ddfb15461a00c3e2 is currently attached to i-01b489457a60298dd
status code: 400, request id: f88ff792-a17f-4fdd-9219-78a937a8d058
eu-west-1 - EC2VPC - 'vpc-c6159fa1' - DependencyViolation: The vpc 'vpc-c6159fa1' has dependencies and cannot be deleted.
eu-west-1 - S3Object - 's3://rebuy-terraform-state-138758637120/run-terraform.lock' - triggered remove
Removal requested: 2 waiting, 6 failed, 5 skipped, 0 finished
eu-west-1 - EC2DHCPOption - 'dopt-bf2ec3d8' - DependencyViolation: The dhcpOptions 'dopt-bf2ec3d8' has dependencies and cannot be deleted.
status code: 400, request id: d85d26e8-9f6f-42f0-811a-3b05471b0254
eu-west-1 - EC2Instance - 'i-01b489457a60298dd' - waiting
eu-west-1 - EC2KeyPair - 'test' - removed
eu-west-1 - EC2RouteTable - 'rtb-ffe91e99' - DependencyViolation: The routeTable 'rtb-ffe91e99' has dependencies and cannot be deleted.
status code: 400, request id: adb44c0e-3f5b-4977-b2ae-7582f57fb4b7
eu-west-1 - EC2SecurityGroup - 'sg-f20f958a' - DependencyViolation: resource sg-f20f958a has a dependent object
status code: 400, request id: c4149482-0cd2-40e0-8fa0-84a61d55a158
eu-west-1 - EC2Subnet - 'subnet-154d844e' - DependencyViolation: The subnet 'subnet-154d844e' has dependencies and cannot be deleted.
status code: 400, request id: ba0649ba-3be8-41ee-ae0f-6b74a1f0a873
eu-west-1 - EC2Volume - 'vol-0ddfb15461a00c3e2' - VolumeInUse: Volume vol-0ddfb15461a00c3e2 is currently attached to i-01b489457a60298dd
status code: 400, request id: 9ac3eac5-f1ef-4337-a780-228295a7ebc7
eu-west-1 - EC2VPC - 'vpc-c6159fa1' - DependencyViolation: The vpc 'vpc-c6159fa1' has dependencies and cannot be deleted.
status code: 400, request id: 89f870e9-1ffa-42be-9f73-76c29f088e1a
Removal requested: 1 waiting, 6 failed, 5 skipped, 1 finished
--- truncating long output ---
As you see aws-nuke now tries to delete all resources which aren't filtered, without caring about the dependencies between them. This results in API errors which can be ignored. They are displayed anyway, because it might be helpful for debugging, if the error is not about dependencies.
aws-nuke retries deleting all resources until all specified ones are deleted or until there are only resources with errors left.
There are two ways to authenticate aws-nuke. There are static credentials and
profiles. The later one can be configured in the shared credentials file (ie
~/.aws/credentials) or the shared config file (ie ~/.aws/config).
To use static credentials the command line flags --access-key-id and
--secret-access-key are required. The flag --session-token is only required
for temporary sessions.
To use shared profiles the command line flag --profile is required. The
profile must be either defined with static credentials in the shared
credential
file
or in shared config
file with an
assuming role.
aws-nuke deletes a lot of resources and there might be added more at any release. Eventually, every resources should get deleted. You might want to restrict which resources to delete. There are multiple ways to configure this.
One way are filters, which already got mentioned. This requires to know the
identifier of each resource. It is also possible to prevent whole resource
types (eg S3Bucket) from getting deleted with two methods.
- The
--targetflag limits nuking to the specified resource types. - The
--excludeflag prevent nuking of the specified resource types.
It is also possible to configure the resource types in the config file like in these examples:
---
regions:
- "eu-west-1"
account-blacklist:
- 1234567890
resource-types:
# only nuke these three resources
targets:
- S3Object
- S3Bucket
- IAMRole
accounts:
555133742: {}
---
regions:
- "eu-west-1"
account-blacklist:
- 1234567890
resource-types:
# don't nuke IAM users
excludes:
- IAMUser
accounts:
555133742: {}
If targets are specified in multiple places (eg CLI and account specific), then a resource type must be specified in all places. In other words each configuration limits the previous ones.
If an exclude is used, then all its resource types will not be deleted.
Hint: You can see all available resource types with this command:
aws-nuke resource-types
It is possible to filter this is important for not deleting the current user
for example or for resources like S3 Buckets which have a globally shared
namespace and might be hard to recreate. Currently the filtering is based on
the resource identifier. The identifier will be printed as the first step of
aws-nuke (eg i-01b489457a60298dd for an EC2 instance).
The filters are part of the account-specific configuration and are grouped by
resource types. This is an example of a config that deletes all resources but
the admin user with its access permissions and two access keys:
---
regions:
- global
- eu-west-1
account-blacklist:
- 1234567890
accounts:
0987654321:
filters:
IAMUser:
- "admin"
IAMUserPolicyAttachment:
- "admin -> AdministratorAccess"
IAMUserAccessKey:
- "admin -> AKSDAFRETERSDF"
- "admin -> AFGDSGRTEWSFEY"Any resource whose resource identifier exactly matches any of the filters in the list will be skipped. These will be marked as "filtered by config" on the aws-nuke run.
Some resources support filtering via properties. When a resource support these properties, they will be listed in the output like in this example:
global - IAMUserPolicyAttachment - 'admin -> AdministratorAccess' - [RoleName: "admin", PolicyArn: "arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AdministratorAccess", PolicyName: "AdministratorAccess"] - would remove
To use properties, it is required to specify a object with properties and
value instead of the plain string.
These types can be used to simplify the configuration. For example, it is possible to protect all access keys of a single user:
IAMUserAccessKey:
- property: UserName
value: "admin"There are also additional comparision types than an exact match:
exact– The identifier must exactly match the given string. This is the default.contains– The identifier must contain the given string.glob– The identifier must match against the given glob pattern. This means the string might contains wildcards like*and?. Note that globbing is designed for file paths, so the wildcards do not match the directory separator (/). Details about the glob pattern can be found in the library documentation.regex– The identifier must match against the given regular expression. Details about the syntax can be found in the library documentation.
To use a non-default comparision type, it is required to specify a object with
type and value instead of the plain string.
These types can be used to simplify the configuration. For example, it is
possible to protect all access keys of a single user by using glob:
IAMUserAccessKey:
- type: glob
value: "admin -> *"It is also possible to use Filter Properties and Filter Types together. For example to protect all Hosted Zone of a specific TLD:
Route53HostedZone:
- property: Name
type: glob
value: "*.rebuy.cloud."Any filter result can be inverted by using invert: true, for example:
CloudFormationStack:
- property: Name
value: "foo"
invert: trueIn this case any CloudFormationStack but the ones called "foo" will be filtered. Be aware that aws-nuke internally takes every resource and applies every filter on it. If a filter matches, it marks the node as filtered.
The easiest way of installing it, is to download the latest release from GitHub.
To compile aws-nuke from source you need a working
Golang development environment. The sources
must be cloned to $GOPATH/src/github.com/rebuy-de/aws-nuke.
Also you need to install Glide, golint and GNU Make.
Then you just need to run make build to compile a binary into the project
directory or make install go install aws-nuke into $GOPATH/bin. With
make xc you can cross compile aws-nuke for other platforms.
Feel free to create a GitHub Issue for any questions, bug reports or feature requests.
You can contribute to aws-nuke by forking this repository, making your changes and creating a Pull Request against our repository. If you are unsure how to solve a problem or have other questions about a contributions, please create a GitHub issue.