SQS Visibility Timeout Mismatch Can Silently Cause Duplicate Lambda Executions
A common but hard-to-detect AWS misconfiguration occurs when an SQS queue's visibility timeout is shorter than its connected Lambda function's execution timeout. When a Lambda takes longer to process a message than the visibility window allows, SQS assumes the consumer has failed and redelivers the message to a second Lambda instance, causing duplicate processing. This produces no errors or explicit log warnings, making the bug appear to be an application-level issue rather than an infrastructure configuration gap. The problem is compounded because SQS queues default to a 30-second visibility timeout while Lambda timeouts are often independently increased to accommodate growing workloads. A developer tool called Infrawise has introduced a deterministic graph-based analyzer that detects this timeout mismatch across active SQS-to-Lambda event source mappings and flags it as a high-severity finding.
This is an AI-generated summary. ShortSingh links to the original source for the complete article.
Discussion (0)
Log in to join the discussion and vote.
Log in