Is It Possible to Copy an AWS Security Group?

We have some security groups that have quite a few rules in them. Rather than having to recreate the same rules for a number of security groups just to accommodate minor differences, is it possible to copy a security group to use as a starting point, or use inheritance, etc?

Doesn't look like you can copy security groups from the web interface. You can however use the AWS CLI to create security groups:

Command :

$ aws ec2 describe-security-groups --group-id MySecurityGroupID

Output :

{
    "securityGroupInfo": [
        {
            "ipPermissionsEgress": [],
            "groupId": "sg-903004f8",
            "ipPermissions": [],
            "groupName": "MySecurityGroup",
            "ownerId": "803981987763",
            "groupDescription": "AWS-CLI-Example"
        }
    ],
    "requestId": "afb680df-d7b1-4f6a-b1a7-344fdb1e3532"
}

And add rules using command :

aws ec2 authorize-security-group-ingress --group-id MySecurityGroupID --ip-protocol tcp --from-port 22 --to-port 22 --cidr-ip 0.0.0.0/0

Output:

{
    "return": "true",
    "requestId": "c24a1c93-150b-4a0a-b56b-b149c0e660d2"
}

From there you should be able to figure out how to simplify the creation of your security groups.

AWS EC2 Console allows you to select the Security Group and perform the operation "Copy to new" in the UI now.

Here is the 'copy security groups' python/boto method from a custom library I wrote to make these kinds of things easier / automate them.. Ultimately this was the solution I came up with.

vpcId is the Virtual Private Cloud Id
keys is a dictionary with your AWS keys

The rest should be straight forward to figure out.

def copyEC2SecurityGroup(self, keys, region, securityGroupName, newSecurityGroupName = None, newRegion = None, vpcId = None):


newEc2Connection = None
print("Creating ec2Connection for source region: " + region)
ec2Connection = lib.getEc2Connection(region, keys)

if newRegion is None:
    newRegion = region
else:
    print("New Region Detected, creating for New region: " + newRegion)
    newEc2Connection = lib.getEc2Connection(newRegion, keys)
    newRegionInfo = newEc2Connection.region

print("new region is: %s" % newRegion)

if newSecurityGroupName is None:
    newSecurityGroupName = securityGroupName

print ("new security group is: %s" % newSecurityGroupName)

# if copying in the same region the new security group cannot have the same name.
if newRegion == region:
    if newSecurityGroupName == securityGroupName:
        print ("Old and new security groups cannot have the same name when copying to the same region.")
        exit(1)

groups = [group for group in ec2Connection.get_all_security_groups() if group.name == securityGroupName]
print"got groups count " + str(len(groups))
if groups:
    theOldGroup = groups[0]
    print theOldGroup.rules
else:
    print("Can't find security group by the name of: %s" % securityGroupName)
    exit(1)
print groups
pprint(theOldGroup)

if newEc2Connection is not None:
    print("Creating new security group in new region")
    sg = newEc2Connection.create_security_group(newSecurityGroupName, newSecurityGroupName, vpcId)
    sleep(5)
else:
    print("Creating new security group in current region")
    sg = ec2Connection.create_security_group(newSecurityGroupName, newSecurityGroupName, vpcId)
    sleep(5)

source_groups = []
for rule in theOldGroup.rules:
    for grant in rule.grants:
        strGrant = str(grant)
        print(strGrant)
        if strGrant.startswith("sg"):
            print("Cannot copy 'security group rule' (%s)... only cidr_ip's e.g. xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/yy." % strGrant)
            continue
        grant_nom = grant.name or grant.group_id
        if grant_nom:
            if grant_nom not in source_groups:
                source_groups.append(grant_nom)
                sg.authorize(rule.ip_protocol, rule.from_port, rule.to_port, grant)
        else:
            sg.authorize(rule.ip_protocol, rule.from_port, rule.to_port, grant.cidr_ip)
return sg