AWS Cognito - Users lost "non-mutable" attribute "email_verified"

Question

After using Cognito for a few months, some users in a user pool have now lost the "email_verified" attribute. I can't understand how it is missing or how to recover.

Symptoms are:

• Users can still login
• User password can not change (eg via JS SDK - changePassword), produces error: "x-amzn-errormessage: Cannot reset password for the user as there is no registered/verified email or phone_number"

• Getting the user attributes for the user with the list-users CLI shows the attribute is missing

  aws cognito-idp list-users --user-pool-id MYID-123 --query 'Users[?Username==`error@bla.com`].[*]'
  [
    [
      [
          "error@bla.com", 
          true, 
          "CONFIRMED", 
          1522127817.526, 
          1522127819.369, 
          [
              {
                  "Name": "sub", 
                  "Value": "123123123341241238"
              }, 
              {
                  "Name": "email", 
                  "Value": "bla@bla.com"
              }
          ]
       ]
    ]
  ]
  

  vs. one with the attribute in place

  aws cognito-idp list-users --user-pool-id MYID-123 --query 'Users[?Username==`bla@bla.com`].[*]'
  [
    [
      [
          "bla@bla.com", 
          true, 
          "CONFIRMED", 
          1524048734.588, 
          1524048737.777, 
          [
              {
                  "Name": "sub", 
                  "Value": "1231231231231235"
              }, 
              {
                  "Name": "email_verified", 
                  "Value": "true"
              }, 
              {
                  "Name": "email", 
                  "Value": "bla@bla.com"
              }
          ]
        ]
     ]
   ]
  

If I try deleting the attribute (with enough permissions), it fails - as one would expect - explaining it is not mutable.

aws cognito-idp admin-delete-user-attributes --user-pool-id MYID-123 --username test2@test.com --user-attribute-names email_verified

An error occurred (InvalidParameterException) when calling the AdminDeleteUserAttributes operation: Cannot modify the non-mutable attribute email_verified

Answer 1

I can not find the cause for this problem, other than blaming AWS Cognito.

A workaround/hack/patch is to add the attribute back, this time, the non-mutable check is not a problem

aws cognito-idp admin-update-user-attributes --user-pool-id MYID-123 --username error@bla.com --user-attributes Name=email_verified,Value=true

And now the user has the attribute again and I can reset the password.