Storing My Amazon Credentials in C# Desktop App

Question

I\'m Looking at using Amazon S3 and simpleDB in a desktop application.

The main issue I have is that I either need to store my aws credentials in the application or use

Answer 1

Will you let anyone that gets a hold of a copy of your program access the data on S3/SimpleDB? If not, you will need your own authentication scheme that's independent from AWS security.

In that case, you could implement a web service that accepts the credentials that you give your customers (a username/password for example, a digital certificate, etc) and then performs the S3/SimpleDB operations that your program requires. That way, the AWS credentials never leave AWS. If a particular user's credentials are compromised, you can cancel those credentials in your web service.