Access control for static content served from S3?

Question

I'm thinking about serving user-specific static content from S3 - the user needs to be authenticated in order to access his static content. So if user A has content c1, c2 and use B has c3, c4, only A should be able to access c1, c2 .

What's a good way to accomplish this? Is there a way to perform per-user / per file authentication in S3?

Answer 1

1. You can use pre-authorized urls
2. a) You could use ACL lists and let each user log in b) ACL for distribution lists also work

For presigned URLs here is some idea about it http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/entry.jspa?externalID=1434

For ACL documentation you should look at http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AmazonS3/latest/S3_ACLs.html

There are libraries that can do this for you. It depends on which language you are working in.