---
id: "aws_access_key_id"
kind: "datatype"
status: "draft"
is_pii: false
categories: ["secrets"]
langs: ["common"]
quality: 78
url: "http://registry.apicrafter.io/datatype/aws_access_key_id"
---

# AWS access key ID (`aws_access_key_id`)

> **Draft.** Draft records have not been reviewed yet and may be incomplete or wrong; do not treat them as authoritative for legal or compliance decisions.

Public half of an Amazon Web Services access key pair, sent with every signed API request together with the secret access key. It has 20 characters: the prefix AKIA for a long-term key of an IAM user or the root user, or ASIA for a temporary key issued by AWS STS, then 16 uppercase letters and digits.

- Personal data (PII): no
- Categories: Secrets and credentials (passwords, keys, tokens) (secrets)
- Countries: global
- Languages: Common to most languages (common)
- Classification: identifier

## Detection

Regular expression (Python `re`):

```
^(?:AKIA|ASIA)[A-Z2-7]{16}$
```

## Examples

- `AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE` — Example key ID from the AWS IAM documentation
- `AIDACKCEVSQ6C2EXAMPLE` (invalid example) — Unique ID of an IAM user (prefix AIDA), not an access key

## Supported by tools

- `awscomprehend`
- `detectsecrets`
- `gitleaks`
- `semgrep`
- `trufflehog`

## Sources

- doc: <https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/reference_identifiers.html#identifiers-prefixes>
- doc: <https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_credentials_access-keys.html>
- other: <https://github.com/gitleaks/gitleaks/blob/master/config/gitleaks.toml>

## Quality

Score 78/100. Missing: second example, mapping (Wikidata, Schema.org, ...), translation.

JSON: <http://registry.apicrafter.io/api/v1/datatypes/aws_access_key_id.json> · Edit: <https://github.com/apicrafter/metacrafter-registry/edit/main/data/datatypes/any/secrets/aws_access_key_id.yaml>