How can this task be accomplished?
Obtain the list of instances by directly querying Amazon EC2 using: aws ec2 describe-instances –filters “Name=key- name,Values=KEYNAMEHERE”.
Obtain the fingerprint for the key pair from the AWS Management Console, then search for the fingerprint in the Amazon Inspector logs.
Obtain the output from the EC2 instance metadata using: curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/public-keys/0/.
Obtain the fingerprint for the key pair from the AWS Management Console, then search for the fingerprint in Amazon CloudWatch Logs using: aws logs filter-log-events.
Explanations:
Theaws ec2 describe-instancescommand with the–filtersoption can be used to list instances that were launched with a specific key pair by filtering based on thekey-name. This directly identifies which EC2 instances were deployed using the compromised key pair.
Searching for the key pair’s fingerprint in Amazon Inspector logs is not relevant for identifying instances that used the compromised key. Amazon Inspector is used for security assessments, not for tracking EC2 instances by key pair.
The EC2 instance metadata endpoint (curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/public-keys/0/) provides metadata about the instance but does not provide information about which key pair was used to launch the instance. It only returns details of the public key used for SSH access on that instance.
Searching for the key pair’s fingerprint in CloudWatch Logs is not effective for identifying EC2 instances launched with a specific key pair. CloudWatch Logs typically capture application and system logs, not metadata about EC2 instance key pairs.
From what I’ve heard, the answer is:
Obtain the list of instances by directly querying Amazon EC2 using: aws ec2 describe-instances –filters “Name=key- name,Values=KEYNAMEHERE”.