The presence of http-3A-2F-2F in the keyword indicates that someone is URL-encoding the colon and slashes to evade naive string matching. Web application firewalls (WAFs) and input filters often block http://169.254.169.254 but may miss variations such as:

If an attacker can cause a vulnerable application (e.g., a PHP, Node.js, or Java app that follows external URLs) to make a request to this decoded endpoint, the server will return the active IAM role's .

: First, an EC2 instance is launched with an IAM role attached. This IAM role defines the permissions the instance has to access AWS resources.

callback-url-http-3A-2F-2F169.254.169.254-2Flatest-2Fmeta-data-2Fiam-2Fsecurity-credentials-2F

A special internal address accessible only from within an EC2 instance. /latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials/ This directory lists the IAM roles attached to the server.

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