See issue https://github.com/livelycode/aws-lib/issues/83 .

When running in AWS with an instance role, setting accessKeyId and secretAccessKey to null does not result in the key, secret, and token being read correctly from the Instance Metadata service.

Or rather these values are being obtained, but they are being assigned to the variables that are then not referenced.

Here in lib/aws.js you are setting securityToken, accessKeyId, and secretAccessKey prior to the values in obj being reset with the values obtained from Instance Metadata.

  var securityToken = obj.token;
  var signHeader = obj.signHeader;
  var host = obj.host;
  var accessKeyId = obj.accessKeyId;
  var path = obj.path;
  var agent = obj.agent;
  var secretAccessKey = obj.secretAccessKey;
  var secure = obj.secure == null ? true : false;
  var connection = secure ? https : http;

Then when you reference the scope variables later they are still null even though you have updated obj.

This pull request updates lib/aws.js to fix this issue.