AWS CloudFront is a content distribution service offered by AWS to serve low latency content with high data speed. The user may want to restrict the access of the object distributed through CloudFront. E.g. the user may restrict that the distribution should be accessed only through their application such that no one else can access it outside their application. The user can specify access of the object using the CloudFront signed URLs such that others cannot access it without the signed URL. To create signed URLs for the AWS S3 objects, the user needs at least one AWS account that has an active CloudFront key pair. The CloudFront key pair can be downloaded only by the AWS account owner as the IAM users are not allowed to create the CloudFront key pairs.

The present guide demonstrates how to create or delete the CloudFront key pairs.

1. Login to the AWS account. In the account section, click on “Security Credentials”.

2. The security credentials screen displays information about the Access Keys, the X.509 certificates as well as the keys. Click on the Key Pairs tab.

3. The Key-Pairs tab lists the existing Amazon CloudFront key pairs. The user can create a new key or make an existing key inactive. Click on “Make Inactive” to make the key inactive.

4. AWS will confirm before inactivating the key. Select “Deactivate this Key Pair”.

5. The key will now be deactivated and cannot be used again until made active. To create a new key, click on “Create New Key”.

6. The new key will now be created and AWS will ask to download the private key of the new key pair. It is a must for the user to save the private key in a proper place as AWS does not store this private key. Further, AWS also does not provide an option to download it again.

7. The Key Pairs tab shows both the active as the well inactive keys. To delete a key, select “Delete”.

8. AWS will confirm before deleting any key.

9. Click on “Delete this Key Pair” to delete the key permanently.

Keywords: Amazon Web Services, AWS, Amazon AWS Console, AWS S3, Amazon CloudFront, AWS CloudFront, CloudFront, AWS EC2, AWS S3, Amazon S3, Download Distribution, AWS IAM, CloudFront Key Pairs