AWS MFA Issue Please verify your MFA serial number is valid and associated with this user

Question

Been using https://github.com/broamski/aws-mfa to handle MFA for AWS with much success. I have three users who get the following error when trying to use it:

An error occurred (AccessDenied) when calling the GetSessionToken operation: MultiFactorAuthentication failed, unable to validate MFA code. Please verify your MFA serial number is valid and associated with this user.

Any ideas on how to troubleshoot? I have 20+ users that are just fine; I'm at the end of my rope on what these three users are doing different. I've verified that they didn't do a bad copy-pasta into their credentials file.

user_17626252 · Answer

You should delete the default profile from your AWS machine, in the following files:

~/.aws/credentials
~/.aws/config

It worked for me.

user_771372 · Answer

you get this if you haven't specified a profile (either inline or as an env variable). You don't need to delete your default profile, if a named profile is not specified in the context then it uses the default profile.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-configure-profiles.html

$ export AWS_PROFILE=user1

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-configure-profiles.html

$ export AWS_PROFILE=user1

AWS MFA Issue Please verify your MFA serial number is valid and associated with this user

2 Answers