Amazon S3

Built, not certified Built and tested against recorded and synthetic responses (version 1.0.0, 10 November 2026). Not yet run against the vendor's sandbox or a client environment.

Reads the objects under a bucket and prefix of Amazon S3, in place, by ETag, so agents can answer from the documents a team keeps there. Access is by an IAM role the client’s own account grants, never an access key.

At a glance

Collector	Amazon S3, version 1.0.0
Reads	Amazon Web Services: Amazon S3 (the vendor's documentation)
Family	Storage
Kind	Files
Ways to connect	Service account
Scopes	Read: s3:ListBucket, s3:GetObject, sts:AssumeRole
Read only	Yes, except: [object Object]
Vendor's API can move money	No
Personal data	Content
Hosts it may contact	*.amazonaws.com, s3.console.aws.amazon.com
Vendor API versions	Amazon S3 REST API (ListObjectsV2, GetObject), AWS STS AssumeRole
Lowest engine version	0.45.0

What it reads

• Objects under the bucket (and prefix, if given): text, Markdown, CSV, PDF, Word (.docx), PowerPoint (.pptx) and Excel (.xlsx), as the folder and SharePoint collectors read them.
• The cursor is each object’s ETag: an unchanged object is never fetched again, and one that has gone (deleted, or moved out of the prefix) is withdrawn.
• Skipped and counted: any other format, an object over max_mb (50 by default) and a document that will not open.
• Names starting with . and keys ending in / are ignored.

How to connect

1. In the account that owns the bucket, create an IAM role that grants s3:ListBucket on the bucket (for the prefix) and s3:GetObject on its objects, and whose trust policy lets the deployment’s identity assume it, with an external ID if you want one.
2. In LightHouse, open Connectors, choose Amazon S3, give the bucket, prefix, region, role ARN and external ID, a label and how often to read. No access key is ever pasted, stored or sealed: the ARN and external ID are identifiers, and the trust policy is the permission.
3. In code, add a kind: s3 source card with bucket, prefix, region, role_arn, external_id, label and requires. Without role_arn the deployment’s own identity reads the bucket, for a bucket in the same account.

Permissions

s3:ListBucket on the prefix and s3:GetObject on its objects, through sts:AssumeRole. The collector only reads: it calls ListObjectsV2 and GetObject, and AssumeRole to take on the role for an hour; it never puts, copies, deletes or changes an ACL.

S3 is reached through the AWS SDK (boto3), not an HTTP client the network recorder can see, so its read-only test replaces boto3.client with a recorder and asserts that every operation is one of those three and that no put_, delete_, copy_ or create_ call appears. The manifest’s read_operations lists the STS call, which is a POST that changes nothing in the bucket.

Limits

• Objects over max_mb (50 by default) and unsupported formats are skipped and counted.
• bucket must be an S3 bucket name, role_arn an IAM role’s ARN, external_id 2 to 1224 letters, digits and +=,.@:/-, and region an AWS region such as eu-west-1.
• PDFs need pdftotext in the image.
• The assumed role’s credentials last an hour.
• Each record links to the object in the AWS console; the console address is a link only, never contacted.

Data handling

• Object text is copied into the deployment’s corpus under the source’s label. Documents can hold personal data of any kind.
• No access key is held. The assumed role’s temporary credentials exist in memory for the run and are never written to logs or run notes.
• Nothing leaves the deployment: only counts reach LightHouse.

Troubleshooting

What you see	What it means	What to do
bucket is an S3 bucket name	The bucket is not a valid S3 bucket name	Use the bucket’s name, not its address
role_arn is an IAM role's ARN	The role is not given as an ARN	Use arn:aws:iam::<account>:role/<name>
external_id is 2 to 1224 letters, digits and +=,.@:/-	The external ID has other characters	Correct it
region is an AWS region, e.g. eu-west-1	The region is malformed	Use a region name
AccessDenied when assuming the role	The trust policy does not allow the deployment’s identity, or the external ID differs	Fix the trust policy
AccessDenied on list or get	The role lacks s3:ListBucket or s3:GetObject	Grant them on the prefix
Read succeeded, 0 written	No object’s ETag changed	Nothing to do

Certification

Each entry is a run by Atlantic Agentic Labs, newest first. Only a run against the vendor’s sandbox or a client environment certifies a collector; a certification lasts six months, or less if the vendor publishes an API version the collector does not list. See How collectors are certified.

Date	Collector	Engine	Vendor API	Method	Expires
10 November 2026	1.0.0	0.45.0	Amazon S3 REST API (ListObjectsV2, GetObject); AWS STS AssumeRole	Fixtures only: built, not certified	Not applicable

Security posture

From the collector’s last scan on the default branch. What each line means, and what blocks a release: Security posture.

Last scanned	10 November 2026
Critical findings	0
High findings	0
Medium findings	0
Low findings	0
Info findings	0
Release blocked	No
Network allow-list check	Pass
Read-only behavioural test	Pass
SBOM (CycloneDX)	Produced
Dependency licences	Pass
Scanners	bandit 1.9.4, semgrep 1.181.1, pip-audit 2.10.1, osv-scanner 2.7.0, cyclonedx-py 7.5.0, pip-licenses 5.5.5, gitleaks repository job aal-secrets, hosts_check tools/hosts_check.py, read-only test pytest -m read_only