Introduction

This action returns a fixed status code from an AWS Lambda.

Prerequisites

• The target AWS Lambda function must be wrapped with the failure-lambda library.
• Only one failure injection can be active per Lambda function at a time

Details

This action uses the steadybit/failure-lambda library, a Node.js module that wraps AWS Lambda handlers to enable failure injection. Failure modes are configured via parameters stored in AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store, which are automatically removed after execution completes.

Activation and deactivation of failure modes typically complete within 5 seconds. However, middleware layers or caching mechanisms may extend this duration during both injection and recovery phases.

Use Cases

• Validate behavior of upstream services and monitoring systems when Lambda functions return specific HTTP status codes
• Test error handling and retry logic for various HTTP response scenarios

Parameters

Parameter	Description	Default
Duration	The duration of the attack.	30s
Rate	The rate of invocations to affect. (100 = all request, 50 = half of all requests)	100%
Status Code	The status code to return.	500