I also want a safe way to do this. But of everything I read, no.
The IAM username and password can only be used with the Amazon Management Console and their forums ( http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSSecurityCredentials/1.0/AboutAWSCredentials.html )
I have developed several ideas in my head to deal with this, but I cannot do it reliably.
My best solution so far is using a database where I mirror the iam username and aws secret passkey. With secret key encrypted c. But it still has the following disadvantages.
- The aws secret key is stored in the database (even if it is not in clear text, it is still present)
- Clients will have user access keys with rights to list iam users and read access to the database.
Therefore, I did not really find this idea.
It just seems like we're both losing something important here.