IAM Overly Permissive Policies

What this rule checks

Detects IAM policies with overly permissive actions like * wildcards.

How to fix it

1. 1Review IAM policies for overly broad permissions
2. 2Replace wildcard (*) actions with specific actions
3. 3Use IAM Access Analyzer to identify unused permissions

import { aws_iam as iam } from 'aws-cdk-lib';

const role = new iam.Role(this, 'Role', {
  assumedBy: new iam.ServicePrincipal('lambda.amazonaws.com'),
});
role.addToPolicy(new iam.PolicyStatement({
  effect: iam.Effect.ALLOW,
  actions: ['*'],
  resources: ['*'],
}));

import { aws_iam as iam } from 'aws-cdk-lib';

const role = new iam.Role(this, 'Role', {
  assumedBy: new iam.ServicePrincipal('lambda.amazonaws.com'),
});
role.addToPolicy(new iam.PolicyStatement({
  effect: iam.Effect.ALLOW,
  actions: ['s3:GetObject', 's3:PutObject'],
  resources: ['arn:aws:s3:::my-app-bucket/*'],
}));

CDK Insights pinpoints the exact file and line in your CDK source for every finding, so you can jump straight to the fix.

Affected resource types

Intentional? Suppress this finding

Sometimes a flag is deliberate — a genuinely public endpoint, say. You can dismiss iam-policies-overly-permissive and the reason is kept in the report, not silently hidden.

In .cdk-insights.json:

{
  "ignoreRules": [
    { "id": "iam-policies-overly-permissive", "reason": "Why this is intentional" }
  ]
}

Or inline in your CDK code:

Validations.of(scope).acknowledge({
  id: 'cdk-insights::iam-policies-overly-permissive',
  reason: 'Why this is intentional',
});

Use the rule ID iam-policies-overly-permissive shown above — not the CDK-* ID from SARIF / GitHub code scanning. To dismiss every finding on one construct instead, use ignorePaths. Suppression docs →

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