Amazon CloudFront extended cryptographic signing capabilities to include SHA-256, providing stronger collision resistance and alignment with modern security standards over the prior SHA-1. This upgrade improves signature security when restricting content access via signed URLs or cookies.
The new SHA-256 option is backwards compatible, allowing existing SHA-1 signed content to continue functioning uninterrupted while enabling customers to meet security and compliance mandates requiring stronger hashing algorithms. The feature is available globally at no extra cost.
Source & further reading
Amazon CloudFront now supports SHA-256 for signed URLs and signed cookies ↗Source published 2026-04-01. This report was prepared with AI assistance from the linked primary-source material. Claims and limitations should be checked against the original announcement or research.