• CRITICAL
  • COMPLIANCE
  • ACCESS
  • HUMAN

How to audit S3 bucket permissions with your AI

Connect your AI to Amazon S3 once. From then on, your agent handles the heavy lifting of scanning policies and access lists.

Ask AI about this page

Short answer

How do I audit S3 bucket permissions with my AI?

Your AI uses specific tools to pull the JSON policies and access control lists for your buckets. It then compares these settings against your security requirements to flag public access or overly permissive roles. You get a clear list of where your data is exposed.

Where every issue lands.

Audit outcomes

The AI organizes its findings into these specific categories.

CRITICAL

Public exposure risks

The AI identifies buckets with open ACLs or policies that allow anyone on the internet to read your data.

COMPLIANCE

Policy violations

Your agent flags bucket policies that break your specific organizational rules or security standards.

ACCESS

Overly broad permissions

The AI finds IAM roles or users that have more access to a bucket than they actually need.

HUMAN

Remediation required

The AI hands off a list of specific buckets that need manual permission updates to close security gaps.

The workflow

What your AI does when the audit starts.

The AI moves through your storage environment to gather the raw permission data.

  1. Fetch bucket policies

    The agent pulls the full JSON policy attached to each bucket to check for statement-level permissions.

    get_bucket_policy

  2. Check access lists

    It examines the ACLs to see which specific AWS accounts or groups have direct access to the objects.

    get_bucket_acl

  3. Analyze permission gaps

    The AI compares the gathered policies and ACLs against your security baseline to find mismatches.

    get_bucket_policyget_bucket_acl

  4. Report vulnerabilities

    The agent summarizes the findings, highlighting exactly which buckets are misconfigured.

    get_bucket_policy

Try it

Copy these to start.

Use these prompts to kick off your audit.

Starting points

These are starting points. Swap out the bucket names for your actual S3 bucket names.

Amazon S3 Connector

You're all set. Choose your MCP client and follow the setup instructions.

Connector linkhttps://edge.vinkius.com/vk_preview_d84yR0sPWaw4HIjFwh5LmwYsw8pIgMg5u6psTyGK/mcp

Claude Desktop

Follow the steps below to connect in seconds.

  1. 1In Claude Desktop, open Settings → Connectors.
  2. 2Click “Add custom connector” and paste the connector link above as the remote MCP server URL.
  3. 3Click Add and start a new chat — Amazon S3 capabilities are ready to use.
Configuration · claude_desktop_config.jsonCopy
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "amazon-s3-mcp": {
      "url": "https://edge.vinkius.com/vk_preview_d84yR0sPWaw4HIjFwh5LmwYsw8pIgMg5u6psTyGK/mcp"
    }
  }
}
Copy into chat04

  • Check the bucket policy for 'production-data-logs' and tell me if it allows public read access.

  • List all buckets in my account that have an ACL allowing 'AllUsers' access.

  • Compare the bucket policy for 'user-uploads-bucket' against my requirement that only the 'app-service-role' can write to it.

  • Audit all my S3 buckets and give me a summary of any that have overly permissive policies.

  • Claude
  • ChatGPT
  • Cursor
  • VS Code
  • Windsurf
  • Claude Code
  • JetBrains
  • Cline

Start here

Connect Amazon S3 once, then ask.

You only need to link your AWS credentials once. The connection is encrypted, and you can immediately start asking your AI about your bucket security.

Connect Amazon S3 to your AI

FAQ

How this task behaves

  • 01

    Can the AI change my bucket permissions?

    No. The AI can only read policies and ACLs. You must manually change permissions in the AWS Console or via CLI.

  • 02

    Does the AI delete any data or policies?

    No. This MCP is read-only. It cannot delete buckets, objects, or any existing security settings.

  • 03

    How does the AI know if a policy is 'bad'?

    The AI uses the security rules or logic you provide in your prompt to evaluate the policies it reads.

  • 04

    Can I audit all my buckets at once?

    Yes, if you ask your AI to scan your entire account, it will iterate through your buckets using the available tools.

  • 05

    What happens if a bucket has no policy?

    The AI will see that the policy is empty and will check the ACLs instead to determine the access level.

  • More questions about Amazon S3? See everything the Amazon S3 Connector can do

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