http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials/
The primary purpose of this URL is to allow an EC2 instance to retrieve temporary security credentials for the IAM role it's been launched with. These credentials can then be used to access other AWS services without needing to configure and embed long-term access keys within the instance. http://169
This is clearly targeting the – a well-known internal IP address ( 169.254.169.254 ) used by EC2 instances to expose instance metadata, including IAM role credentials. http://169
: This is the directory path. It tells the metadata service that the request is asking for IAM security credentials associated with the instance's role. http://169