AWS Lambda: Cross-account pass role is not allowed.

Today I came across the following exception while working with the AWS SDK for Amazon Lambda:

com.amazonaws.AmazonServiceException: Cross-account pass role is not allowed. (Service: AWSLambda; Status Code: 403; Error Code: AccessDeniedException; Request ID: xxx)

At first I was a bit puzzled where this exception might come from; but when I found out what the problem was, it seemed to be pretty obvious:

I tried to upload a lambda function to one AWS account while specifying an execution role that belonged to another AWS account.

So that could easily be fixed by providing a role belonging to the correct account!

Alternatively, this error might also occur when you deploy a lambda function which has references to another cross-account role in the template.yaml file (as mentioned by Steven T in the comments below)

UPDATE

As mentioned in the comments by rjhintz, if you require to use the role from another user, you can do so by modifying the policy for the role as follows:

{
   "Version":"2012-10-17",
   "Statement":[
      {
         "Effect":"Allow",
         "Principal":{
            "AWS":[
               "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/user1",
               "arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/user2"
            ],
            "Service":"ec2.amazonaws.com"
         },
         "Action":"sts:AssumeRole"
      }
   ]
}