A company engaged a third party to audit several AWS accounts. Cross-account IAM roles were created in each target account. The auditor is unable to access some of the accounts. Which of the following could be causing this issue? (Choose three.)
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Correct answer: The external ID used by the auditor is missing or incorrect., The auditor has not been granted permission to perform sts:AssumeRole on the role in the destination account., The role ARN provided to the auditor is missing or incorrect..
Why this is the answer
When assuming a cross-account IAM role, several factors must be correct for the operation to succeed. An incorrect or missing external ID will prevent role assumption, as it's a security best practice to prevent confused deputy attacks. If the auditor's IAM entity (user or role) lacks the sts:AssumeRole permission on the target role's resource, they cannot assume it. Finally, the Role ARN uniquely identifies the role to be assumed; if it's incorrect or malformed, the AssumeRole API call will fail. The auditor's password and secret access key are irrelevant for assuming a role, as role assumption uses temporary credentials. While an EC2 role can assume another role, the statement "must be set to the destination account role" is vague and not a direct cause of failure in this context.
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