Amazon S3 403 AccessDenied error

Question

I get some 403 odd errors from Amazon when querying objects from S3 bucket. It seems to be intermittent, and it only happens in quick succession.

If I try to access the same objects later, I can usually retrieve them without problems.

I feel that these errors are due to some kind of speed limit limitation, but I cannot find anything in the docs. Is speed limiting a possible cause of 403 error?

Answer 1

My problem was that the objects I requested did not exist. I'm not sure if there is any special configuration that we made to make it 403, not 404, but to this day, if I try to request an object from our bucket, which I am sure does not exist, I get 403 .

The reason for the 403 is probably one of security; if someone catches objects, and sometimes they get 403 because they don’t have access to the object that exists, and sometimes they get 404 because the object does not legally exist, they can potentially get some confidential information.