Amazon allowing an instance to retrieve information about itself from an internal public API server without providing AWS API credentials
The information is available on a Web Service that returns text/plain data
API URL: http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/
Available information:
amiid ami-launch-index ami-manifest-path block-device-mapping/ hostname instance-action instance-id instance-type kernel-id local-hostname local-ipv4 mac network/ placement/ public-hostname public-ipv4 public-keys/ reservation-id security-groups
Example Request:
GET http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/hostname
Response:
ec2-67-202-51-223.compute-1.amazonaws.com
