SignatureDoesNotMatch Error in AWS CLI [Solved]

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# SignatureDoesNotMatch Error in AWS CLI [Solved]

There are 3 main reasons the SignatureDoesNotMatch occurs in AWS CLI:

Your secret access key or access key id is incorrect.
Your auto-generated secret access key contains special characters (e.g. % , /, or + characters) that cause the error, try to create a new key pair.
You are in a virtual machine and there is a discrepancy between the host's OS time and the guest's OS time.

signature does not match error

# Verify your Credentials are Correct

To solve the "Request signature we calculated does not match the signature you provided" error, we must first verify the configured secret access key and access key id are correct.

If you have configured the AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY environment variables, they have higher precedence than the values you've stored in your credentials file.

To print the environment variables, run the commands that correspond to your operating system:

shell

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# on Linux and macOS
echo $AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
echo $AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

# on Windows with CMD
echo %AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID%
echo %AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY%

# on Windows with PowerShell
echo $Env:AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
echo $Env:AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

If the environment variables aren't set, verify the values of the aws_access_key_id and aws_secret_access_key variables in your credentials file.

The credentials file is located at ~/.aws/credentials on Linux and macOS, and at C:\Users\USERNAME\.aws\credentials on Windows.

The syntax of the credentials file should look as follows.

credentials

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[default]
aws_access_key_id=YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_ID
aws_secret_access_key=YOUR_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

[admin]
aws_access_key_id=YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_ID
aws_secret_access_key=YOUR_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

Make sure you don't enclose the value of your aws_access_key_id or aws_secret_access_key in single or double quotes.

# Verify your Secret Key Doesn't Contain Special Characters

Once you're sure that the values of your access key and secret access key are correct, verify whether your secret access key contains any of the following characters: %, /, +.

If your secret key contains one of these characters, the solution is to generate a new credentials key pair.

Open your IAM console and click on the user. In the Security Credentials tab, click on the Create Access key button and update your configuration to use the newly generated credentials.

create access key

After you generate the key, run the aws configure command or update your environment variables to the new keys.

# Sync OS time if in a Virtual Machine

The SignatureDoesNotMatch error commonly happens if you're in a virtual machine and the host's OS time does not match the guest's OS time.

If you're in an Ubuntu virtual machine, restart the timedatectl service unit to update the time to the current time.

shell

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sudo systemctl restart systemd-timesyncd.service

To verify the time was updated successfully, check the logs:

shell

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journalctl -xe | tail

# Additional Resources

You can learn more about the related topics by checking out the following tutorials:

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SignatureDoesNotMatch Error in AWS CLI [Solved]

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