SignatureDoesNotMatch, The request signature we calculated does not match the signature you provided

Question

I have looked at other questions on SO, all of them don't have SES and Java as part of their question.

Exception

Exception in thread "main" com.amazonaws.AmazonServiceException: Status Code: 403, AWS Service: AmazonSimpleEmailService, AWS Request ID: 6828fb27-8972-11e3-9700-b705133266ce, AWS Error Code: SignatureDoesNotMatch, AWS Error Message: The request signature we calculated does not match the signature you provided. Check your AWS Secret Access Key and signing method. Consult the service documentation for details.
    at com.amazonaws.http.AmazonHttpClient.handleErrorResponse(AmazonHttpClient.java:773)
    at com.amazonaws.http.AmazonHttpClient.executeHelper(AmazonHttpClient.java:417)
    at com.amazonaws.http.AmazonHttpClient.execute(AmazonHttpClient.java:229)
    at com.amazonaws.services.simpleemail.AmazonSimpleEmailServiceClient.invoke(AmazonSimpleEmailServiceClient.java:1254)
    at com.amazonaws.services.simpleemail.AmazonSimpleEmailServiceClient.listVerifiedEmailAddresses(AmazonSimpleEmailServiceClient.java:296)
    at com.amazonaws.services.simpleemail.AmazonSimpleEmailServiceClient.listVerifiedEmailAddresses(AmazonSimpleEmailServiceClient.java:1132)
    at com.mcruiseon.server.amazonses.test.AWSJavaMailSample.verifyEmailAddress(AWSJavaMailSample.java:169)
    at com.mcruiseon.server.amazonses.test.AWSJavaMailSample.main(AWSJavaMailSample.java:84)

Source Code

public class AWSJavaMailSample {
    private static final String TO = "personalemail@gmail.com";
    private static final String FROM = "admin@myproductdomain.com";
    private static final String BODY = "Hello World!";
    private static final String SUBJECT = "Hello World!";

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        AWSCredentials credentials = new ClasspathPropertiesFileCredentialsProvider()
                .getCredentials();
        AmazonSimpleEmailService ses = new AmazonSimpleEmailServiceClient(
                credentials);
        Region usWest2 = Region.getRegion(Regions.US_EAST_1);
        ses.setRegion(usWest2);
        verifyEmailAddress(ses, FROM);
        // verifyEmailAddress(ses, TO);
        Properties props = new Properties();
        props.setProperty("mail.transport.protocol", "aws");
        props.setProperty("mail.aws.user", "ses-smtp-user.some_number") ; 
        props.setProperty("mail.aws.password", "password_setup_for_this_user");
        Session session = Session.getInstance(props);
        try {
            Message msg = new MimeMessage(session);
            msg.setFrom(new InternetAddress(FROM));
            msg.addRecipient(Message.RecipientType.TO, new InternetAddress(TO));
            msg.setSubject(SUBJECT);
            msg.setText(BODY);
            msg.saveChanges();

            Transport t = new AWSJavaMailTransport(session, null);
            t.connect();
            t.sendMessage(msg, null);

            t.close();
        } catch (AddressException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
            System.out
                    .println("Caught an AddressException, which means one or more of your "
                            + "addresses are improperly formatted.");
        } catch (MessagingException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
            System.out
                    .println("Caught a MessagingException, which means that there was a "
                            + "problem sending your message to Amazon's E-mail Service check the "
                            + "stack trace for more information.");
        }
    }
    private static void verifyEmailAddress(AmazonSimpleEmailService ses,
            String address) {
        ListVerifiedEmailAddressesResult verifiedEmails = ses
                .listVerifiedEmailAddresses();
        if (verifiedEmails.getVerifiedEmailAddresses().contains(address))
            return;

        ses.verifyEmailAddress(new VerifyEmailAddressRequest()
                .withEmailAddress(address));
        System.out.println("Please check the email address " + address
                + " to verify it");
        System.exit(0);
    }
}

SES Setup

1. Added myproductdomain.com to Domains.
2. Added admin@myproductdomain.com to Email Addresses.

AwsCredentials.properties

1. For secretKey="aws website login password"
2. For accesskey="https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/home#users, security credentials, for ses-smtp-user.some_number, access key"

I am trying out the "hello world" of the SES from the eclipse plugin. Should have worked right out of the box.

Answer 1

I believe the problem is that you uses is an "ses-smtp-user.some_number". You see, with SES, there are two ways to send emails.

• using web service (AmazonSimpleEmailServiceClient)
• using SMTP

The user that was created was for smtp, ses-smtp-user.some_number. You are using that credential for a web service call.

My suggestion is to create a normal user (not from the SES screen), and assign SES permissions. Do note that the newly created credentials won't work with SMTP now.

If you want a credential that works with both, SMTP and web service, you may want to read up on this: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/smtp-credentials.html#smtp-credentials-convert