Hey everyone, I just installed the Waves Central software from Waves Audio, and I noticed it runs some commands that pull EC2 instance metadata, which only works in AWS. I'm curious about why it needs to do this. Can anyone shed some light on this behavior? Here are the commands I found:
```
C:Windowssystem32cmd.exe /d /s /c "powershell.exe -c "$ErrorActionPreference='Stop';[string]$token = (Invoke-WebRequest -Method Put -Headers @{'X-aws-ec2-metadata-token-ttl-seconds' = '21600'} http://169.254.169.254/latest/api/token).Content;(Invoke-WebRequest -Headers @{'X-aws-ec2-metadata-token' = $Token} http://169.254.169.254/latest/dynamic/instance-identity/document).Content""
```
```
C:Windowssystem32cmd.exe /d /s /c "powershell.exe -Command "& { $ErrorActionPreference='Stop';[string]$token = (Invoke-WebRequest -Method Put -Headers @{'X-aws-ec2-metadata-token-ttl-seconds' = '21600'} -UseBasicParsing http://169.254.169.254/latest/api/token).Content;(Invoke-WebRequest -Headers @{'X-aws-ec2-metadata-token' = $token} -UseBasicParsing http://169.254.169.254/latest/dynamic/instance-identity/document).Content }""`
3 Answers
You could try running those commands individually to see what data they pull back. That might give some insight into why Waves Central needs that information.
It seems like the software is trying to refresh a login token. Weird that it’s accessing the AWS EC2 instance metadata endpoint, though. It doesn't really make sense for a desktop app unless Waves Central is checking if it’s running in the cloud. Maybe they reused some code from a cloud setup. Have any of you seen other desktop apps access `169.254.169.254` before?
If you're confident that Waves Central is the one executing these commands, it might be worth reaching out to their support for clarity. It’s unusual behavior for a desktop application.
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