Instance Metadata - CI/CD Glossary Definition
Instance metadata is information about a running cloud instance (its ID, IP, region, and temporary IAM credentials) served over a link-local endpoint such as 169.254.169.254, readable only from the instance itself.
Security note
Because it can hand out IAM credentials, the metadata endpoint is a classic SSRF target. IMDSv2 requires a session token to mitigate this.
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