How to validate JWT without library - jwt

I have a login page, I get the user email and user password from the inputs.
I created a "fetch" in my JavaScript file, and sent the user email and user password to my backend.
Since there is indeed this email and password registered in my database, the backend returns my token inside a json.
This is my token:
eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpc3MiOiJsb2NhbGhvc3QiLCJuYW1lIjoiVmluaWNpdXMiLCJlbWFpbCI6InZpbmljaXVzQGhvdG1haWwuY29tIn0=.YvasYRuuoreFzD5vzYJA5D33eDAyqcCDRWLu3ObRxkw=
I have my way to save it, I saved in the localStorage.
Now the user wants to use all the pages of the website, so I need to validate.
To do so, in the pages that need login, I created a new Fetch and passed the token in the header, like that:
header: {
'Content-Type':'application/json',
'Accept': 'application/json',
'Authorization': 'Bearer '+localStorage.getItem("token")
}
Everything alright so far. However, I don't know what to do when the data gets to my backend. Can you please confirm if my guess is right?
-> My token hits the backend, so I do the "reverse", that is, I decode the token to get the user email and password
-> I check if the email and password matches those of my database
-> I also create a new "jwt signature" with the email and password to see if it matches with the token's signature. I have to do this way because signatures have hash and hash can't be undone.
-> After working, I return a json saying to my front-end that she/he is allowed and If I want to, I return some data of the user to use in my page too.
Is that right? If not, can you please explain to me in a simple way? I have some issues to learn, that's why I couldn't understand much when I read some texts about it.

Please read more about it here https://jwt.io/introduction.
Basically, the token is base64-encoded so you can easily decode to read the content. Therefore it shouldn't include the credentials but only the id to identify the user (and extra data if needed). Then you can validate it using your secret key, it's depending on the algorithm you chose when issuing the token as well - here is HS256.
The last part of the token after dot (.) is the signature you need to validate. If it is correct then you know the token is valid and the current user from what you see inside the token.
For example if you want to use the HMAC SHA256 algorithm, the signature will be created in the following way:
HMACSHA256(
base64UrlEncode(header) + "." +
base64UrlEncode(payload),
secret)
Use the library that you use to issue the token to validate this, best to read its documentation.
For example, this is the content I decoded from your token:
{
"iss": "localhost",
"name": "Vinicius",
"email": "vinicius#hotmail.com"
}
So if you validated the signature you can believe that the user who is using this token is vinicius#hotmail.com

Related

Persisting user state in sveltekit

I'm trying to hook up a Strapi backend to a SvelteKit frontend, and stuck on how to persist user login state so that everything doesn't just reset on refresh, or when navigating to a new page. I've tried:
Storing the jwt and user object issued by Strapi in localStorage and initializing the Svelte store with it. Seemed like I was getting close, but a) I couldn't do export const user = writable(localStorage.user) because that code was running in the browser, and I couldn't wrap it in an if (browser) {...} because import and export can only appear at the top level. Also tried a function in hooks.js to read the contents of localStorage and update the store, but it seems that functions getting called from there run on the server, even if it's the same function that works to access localStorage on login... and plus b) from what I gather, storing jwt's in localStorage is insecure.
Storing the jwt and user object in an http only cookie. Cookies and http headers seem really confusing, and I had a hard time manipulating them to store the jwt and put it in each header. But I think what really stumped me was essentially the same SSR issue of never knowing essentially how to successfully interface between the client and server. I.e. if (browser) {...} never seemed to work, or I couldn't get it to, anyway. (Happy to provide more code details on what I tried here if needed. It's a mess, but it's saved in git.)
I know this is a thing every app that has users needs to do, so I'm sure there's a way to do it in SvelteKit. But I can't find anything online that explains it, and I can't figure it out from the official docs either.
So am I missing something easy? (Probably.) Or is there a tricky way to do this?
For a SvelteKit SPA authenticating to Strapi, here's the happy path flow I would use:
SvelteKit page /routes/login.svelte collects the username (identifier) and password and a button's on:click handler posts those values via fetch to your own /routes/auth.js:post() endpoint. Why? Because now your server's endpoint is handling the login on behalf of the user so you can set an httpOnly cookie in the response.
In your auth.js endpoint post() method, you will want to do a few things:
Use fetch to post identifier and password to Strapi authentication (http://localhost:1337/auth/local) to get the JWT (response.body.jwt)
Use fetch to get user info from Strapi (http://localhost:1337/users/me). In the get, add a header called 'Authentication' with a value of 'Bearer ' + the JWT you just received from Strapi in the previous step
Return the user info from the response from Strapi and pass it back to your client in the response.body
Set a header httpOnly cookie with the value of the JWT.
Back on the client in the last part of the login button's on:click handler, take the user info from res.json() and put it in a writeable store called user or in the SvelteKit session store...
import { session } from '$app/stores'
...
const loginClickHandler = async () => {
...
const fromEndpoint = await res.json()
session.set({ user: fromEndpoint.user })
}
At this point, you have the user information persisted client-side and the JWT as an httpOnly cookie that can't be read or modified by client-side JavaScript code. Each request you make to your own server's pages or endpoints will send the JWT cookie along.
If you want to logout, call an endpoint on your server (/auth/logout) that sets the existing jwt cookie to have an Expires based on the current date/time:
response.headers['Set-Cookie'] = `jwt=; Path=/; HttpOnly; Expires=${new Date().toUTCString()}`
You would also want to clear the user object in your store (or the session store).
The main takeaway for the above example is that your client would never directly talk to Strapi. Strapi's API would be called only by your SvelteKit server's endpoints. The httpOnly jwt cookie representing your session with Strapi would be included in every request to your server's endpoints to use/validate with Strapi's API (or delete if expired or the user logged out).
There are lots of other approaches but I prefer this one for security reasons.

Retrieve email from token | #auth0/auth0-spa-js

I have been trying to upgrade to #auth0/auth0-spa-js from auth0-js, although I could not get my head around reading an email from a token which in turn was obtained from await useAuth0().getTokenSilently()
I use jwt.io to decrypt the token, and this is what I get in the payload:
{
"iss": "https://TENANT_NAME.auth0.com/",
"sub": "auth0|SOME_HASH",
"aud": [
"https://API_IDENTIFIER",
"https://TENANT_NAME.auth0.com/userinfo"
],
"iat": 1563699940,
"exp": 1563786340,
"azp": "SOME_OTHER_HASH",
"scope": "openid profile email"
}
When I was using auth0-js I could just add scope: "openid email" to new auth0.WebAuth({...}) and voilà – I had email and email_verified in the payload of the decrypted token.
I believe the 2 part series of tutorials were not able to answer my question, and retrieving the token from a hooked getTokenSilently() inside my Apollo configuration was also a challenge on its own. I like the redirect implementation for SPA, however. Please, can you suggest a proper way to include email and email_verified in the token's payload?
UPDATE
By reading this piece of documentation on api-tokens I understood the token I am getting from getTokenSilently() is called the access token. I have been using ID tokens in all of my requests' headers till this day, and that was probably a bad approach:
In the OIDC-conformant pipeline, ID Tokens should never be used as API tokens.
Also, the documentation says:
The token does not contain any information about the user except for the user ID (located in the sub claim).
In many cases, you may find it useful to retrieve additional user information. You can do this by calling the /userinfo API endpoint with the Access Token.
Which I did by following the shell example. I have sent the request with my access token and magically got an object containing the user's profile information from Auth0's Custom API.
We got close, what is an algorithm converting the "sub" into user profile residing inside Auth0's Custom API which I can implement for my backend written in ruby?
Yes, as you mention, ID tokens should not be used as API Tokens. They have a different usage (and you don't want your API Token to be too big, because you send it in each request's headers).
To get the user email, you can just fetch the UserProfile given in the ID Token. To achieve that, you just have to call getUser instead of getTokenSilently.
If you want more infos about the user, you have 2 ways to fetch user info:
You use the Auth0 Management API to fetch the user infos, based on the user id (in the sub claim of the ID Token) and using this API endpoint. In Ruby, you can just use a basic HTTP request.
You use a rule to always include specific fields in the ID Token. For example, you can include user_metadata and app_metadata in your ID Tokens. That way, you can use it without additional API call. To achieve that, you will need a specific Rule that will run when ID Tokens are generated (more general API doc).
An example rule that would add all user_metadata and app_metadata to the ID token would be:
function (user, context, callback) {
const namespace = 'your_url_namespace_just_for_cosmetic_but_required/';
context.idToken[namespace + 'user_metadata'] = user.user_metadata;
context.idToken[namespace + 'app_metadata'] = user.app_metadata;
callback(null, user, context);
}
And you will have the info in your ID Token for your frontend to use.
For the record, more rules examples on this hard-to-find page.

How to convert api body x-www-form-urlencoded to raw plain/text

I'm setting up oAuth generation in new testing software, Tosca. Tosca can only handle API calls with raw body types. I need to convert below x-www-form-urlencoded payload to plain/text. The request is denied with "developerMessage": "The authentication service denied the request".
I have tried changing all of the ":"'s to "=" and all linebreaks to "&." Which has worked for converting other x-www-form-urlencoded payloads to plain/text. I have removed our client_id and client_secret and added them to basic auth. I have removed any and all special characters and spaces from the body and still getting error.
scope:openid
realm:employer
auth_method:cleartrust
auth_id_user_token:A+B/C/D==
nonce:cd
identity_method:air
response_type:id_token token
grant_type:password
which I changed to
scope=openid&realm=employer&auth_method=cleartrust&auth_id_user_token=A+B/C/D==&nonce=cd&identity_method=air&response_type=id_token token&grant_type=password
The plain/text api call should get a successful response and bring back oAuth token.
Full disclosure: I work for Tricentis in the Support Department.
Tosca's API Engine can also handle url-encoded payloads. See this manual page for an example screenshot: https://support.tricentis.com/community/manuals_detail.do?lang=en&version=12.3.0&url=engines_3.0/api/api_create_url-encoded.htm
Additionally, please follow these steps:
In the Technical View tab, open the Headers pane on the right-hand side. There enter a Content-Type header param with value application/x-www-form-urlencoded.
In the Auth tab, select Basic Auth as the method and use the client_id as the username and the client_secret as the password. Tick the checkbox Pre-authenticate.
In the Payload tab, you can enter the url-encoded payload required by your web service. Since you use grant_type = password, the payload has to include at least the string grant_type=password&username=someUsername&password=somePassword

How to secure a Jersey REST call in this case

The problem i am facing is that clicking on F12 on Chrome Browser , i could see all the Rest Calls which are made to fetch the data
For example , one of the REST API call is
(When clicked on the above link , it fetches the data )
This is my front code consists of Jquery
function displaymarketupdates() {
var updatedon = "";
var html = '';
var t = "",
$.ajax({
type: "GET",
url: e,
crossDomain: !0,
dataType: "json",
timeout: 17e3,
async: !0,
cacheResults: !1,
cache: !1,
contentType: "application/json",
charset: "utf-8",
beforeSend: function() {
$(".loadingWrapformarketupdates").show()
},
complete: function() {
$(".loadingWrapformarketupdates").hide()
},
success: function(response) {
},
error: function(t, e, a) {
$(".loadingWrapformarketupdates").hide()
}
}).done(function() {
})
}
And this is my service
#Path("/fetchallvalues")
public class FetchAllValues {
public FetchAllValues() {}
private final static Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(FetchAllValues.class);
#GET#Produces("text/plain")
public Response Fetch_all_values() {
PreparedStatement fetch_all_pstmt = null;
ResultSet fetch_all_Rset = null;
Connection dbConnection = null;
ResponseBuilder builder = Response.status(Status.NOT_FOUND);
final JSONArray fetch_array = new JSONArray();
final String inputsql = "select * from all_values";
try {
dbConnection = DBConnection.getDBConnection();
fetch_all_pstmt = dbConnection.prepareStatement(inputsql);
fetch_all_Rset = fetch_all_pstmt.executeQuery();
while (fetch_all_Rset.next()) {
====
}
Response.status(Status.OK);
builder = Response.ok(fetch_array.toString());
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
logger.error("Error description", e);
} finally {
try {
DBConnection.close(fetch_all_pstmt, fetch_all_Rset);
} catch (Exception e) {
logger.error("Error description", e);
}
try {
DBConnection.close(dbConnection);
} catch (Exception e) {
logger.error("Error description", e);
}
}
return builder.build();
}
}
Could you please let me know how to secure the REST CALL in this case
You cannot hide an URL from a Browser's network monitoring. It is meant to be displayed so that it can be inferred that what is happening when you hit a button or click something.
Securing a REST Jersey call is a totally different thing. That means you do not want people to see your data that you are going to pass. As correctly mentioned by Martingreber that if you call this URL on HTTPS that may help you encrypt data that you send across the servers. Or securing a REST call actually means you provide some kind of authentication to it . Like Basic , Hashing like MD5, Token based Authentication like JWT.
The only thing that you can do to hide explicit details from your browser that runs your JavaScript is minify your script . But still your URL remains exposed as many times as it is called by someone who fiddles with the F12 key on Chrome to see what's going on. One more thing can be if you are concerned about your main service call, and don't want to expose that , then just PROXY it using some service, which you are already doing . But by no means, you can avoid your URL being getting displayed, when someone calls it.
In your case fetchAllValues service is fetching the data and exposing it to anybody on the web who clicks it, but that can be prevented if you authenticate the service, like the minute i click that URL, it asks me for a password! Then i cannot access it. A very simple way to authenticate this service would to call a Filter or an Interceptor just before the request to ask for username and password like credentials.
I hope you got the point. Hope this helps :)
You will always be able to see the URL that is being processed. Still, you could obfuscate the Service Endpoint to hide the purpose of the service itself, e.g. #Path("/XYZ")instead of #Path("fetchallvalues")
If you want to hide the data that is being transmitted between the client and the server, so noone can read it, simply use https. Depending on your webserver (Jetty, Tomcat) you will have to configure it differently, still you will need a ssl certificate for your domain, which you can get here for example: https://letsencrypt.org
If you want to secure your webservice, so it can't be used by anyone, but only by specific users, you might want to give Spring Security a try: User authentication on a Jersey REST service
This is a problem that needs some smart hacks to fix it.
In the hyperlinked stackoverflow page, you will get an example of how to make a SOAP request from client side JavaScript.
SOAP request from JavaScript
Now here's the plan:
In the server side, we have a random number generator, which generates a random number in short intervals, say 5 minutes.
The random number generator will be exposed as a SOAP service and it will produce the random number generated.
From the client side, we will invoke the SOAP random generator service (refering to the stackoverflow page mentioned above) and get the generated random number as the response. We will invoke the service from a JS function which will be fired when your page is loaded (onLoad). So, now we have the random number at the client side.
Then, we pass the random number as a path param in the GET request URL of the REST call and fire the GET request.
In the server side, once the Rest GET request is received, we check if the number received as path param is the same number that is generated in the server side.
If the numbers match, then we give the required response, else do not send the response.
Here we are trying to introduce an unique key, which is the random number generated at the server side. This unique key, when passed as the path param of the Rest GET request URL, serves as an identity of the origin of the Rest GET call. For someone who wants to invoke the Rest Api by referring to the Network Tab of the Chrome Dev console, will not get the unique key for a long time ( as it is refreshed/regenerated after every 5 minutes). Thus the hacker will not be able to use the Rest Api for a long duration. Also, since we are transporting the unique key (the random number) from the server to client side using SOAP, it is not possible for the hacker to get it from the Chrome's developer console.
Hope this approach helps!
Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do to prevent the client from inspecting the requested URL. But you always can require credentials to access your API endpoints.
Authentication in REST APIs
In REST applications, each request from the client to the server must contain all the necessary information to be understood by the server. With it, you are not depending on any session context stored on the server and you do not break the REST stateless constraint, defined by Roy Thomas Fielding in his dissertation:
5.1.3 Stateless
[...] communication must be stateless in nature [...], such that each request from client to server must contain all of the information necessary to understand the request, and cannot take advantage of any stored context on the server. Session state is therefore kept entirely on the client. [...]
When accessing protected resources (endpoints that require authentication), every request must contain all necessary data to be properly authenticated/authorized. And authentication data should belong to the standard HTTP Authorization header. From the RFC 7235:
4.2. Authorization
The Authorization header field allows a user agent to authenticate
itself with an origin server -- usually, but not necessarily, after
receiving a 401 (Unauthorized) response. Its value consists of
credentials containing the authentication information of the user
agent for the realm of the resource being requested. [...]
In other words, the authentication will be performed for each request.
Basic authentication
The Basic Authentication scheme, defined in the RFC 7617, is a good start for securing a REST API:
2. The 'Basic' Authentication Scheme
The Basic authentication scheme is based on the model that the client
needs to authenticate itself with a user-id and a password for each
protection space ("realm"). [...] The server will service the request only if it can validate
the user-id and password for the protection space applying to the
requested resource.
[...]
To receive authorization, the client
obtains the user-id and password from the user,
constructs the user-pass by concatenating the user-id, a single
colon (":") character, and the password,
encodes the user-pass into an octet sequence,
and obtains the basic-credentials by encoding this octet sequence
using Base64 into a sequence of US-ASCII
characters.
[...]
If the user agent wishes to send the user-id "Aladdin" and password
"open sesame", it would use the following header field:
Authorization: Basic QWxhZGRpbjpvcGVuIHNlc2FtZQ==
[...]
Token-based authentication
If you don't want to send the username and the password over the wire for every request, you could consider using a token-based authentication. In this approach, you exchange your hard credentials (username and password) for a token which the client must send to the server in each request:
The client sends their credentials (username and password) to the server.
The server authenticates the credentials and generates a token.
The server stores the previously generated token in some storage along with the user identifier and an expiration date.
The server sends the generated token to the client.
In every request, the client sends the token to the server.
The server, in each request, extracts the token from the incoming request. With the token, the server looks up the user details to perform authentication and authorization.
If the token is valid, the server accepts the request.
If the token is invalid, the server refuses the request.
The server can provide an endpoint to refresh tokens.
Again, the authentication must be performed for every request.
The token can be opaque (which reveals no details other than the value itself, like a random string) or can be self-contained (like JSON Web Token).
Random String: A token can be issued by generating a random string and persisting it to a database with an expiration date and with a user identifier associated to it.
JSON Web Token (JWT): Defined by the RFC 7519, it's a standard method for representing claims securely between two parties. JWT is a self-contained token and enables you to store a user identifier, an expiration date and whatever you want (but don't store passwords) in a payload, which is a JSON encoded as Base64. The payload can be read by the client and the integrity of the token can be easily checked by verifying its signature on the server. You won't need to persist JWT tokens if you don't need to track them. Althought, by persisting the tokens, you will have the possibility of invalidating and revoking the access of them. To find some great resources to work with JWT, have a look at http://jwt.io.
In a token-based authentication, tokens are your credentials. So the tokens should be sent to the server in the standard HTTP Authorization header as described above.
Once you are using Jersey, you could have a look at this answer for more details on how to implement a token-based authentication in Jersey.
HTTPS
When sending sensitive data over the wire, your best friend is HTTPS and it protects your application against the man-in-the-middle attack.
To use HTTPS, you need a certificate issued by a certificate authority such as Let’s Encrypt, that claims to be a free, automated, and open certificate authority.

Facebook server-side authentication flow: is this the right "code?"

I'm using FB.login on the JS client and want to verify the user's identity on the server. So, the client gets a signedRequest from facebook and sends it to the server. The server splits on the period, and decodes the second part of the signedRequest into a json object.
What should I be using for "code" when I send my server-side request to
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?
client_id=YOUR_APP_ID
&redirect_uri=YOUR_REDIRECT_URI
&client_secret=YOUR_APP_SECRET
&code=CODE_GENERATED_BY_FACEBOOK
My decoded json looks something like:
{"algorithm":"HMAC-SHA256","code":"2.AQCPA_yfx4JHpufjP.3600.1335646800.1-5702286|l11asGeDQTMo3MrMx3SC0PksALj6g","issued_at":1335642445,"user_id":"5232286"}
Is that the code I need? Does it need to be B64 encoded? If this isn't the code, what code should I use?
_
What I've tried:
The request I'm trying to use is:
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?client_id=295410083869479&redirect_uri=https://squaredme.appspot.com/facebookredirect&client_secret=44f1TOPSECRETbb8e&code=2.AQCPA_yfx4JHpufjP.3600.1335646800.1-5702286|l11asGeDQTMo3MrMx3SC0PksALj6g
but this returns the error:
{"error":{"message":"Error validating verification code.","type":"OAuthException","code":100}}
I can't tell if this is because I'm using a bad code, or what. Noteably, this is running on my local dev server, and squaredme.appspot.com definitely does NOT resolve to my IP. I don't know if facebook checks that or what - I'm assuming I'd get a better error message. Thanks for any direction!
You are trying to somehow combine the two flows together and that's why things don't work well.
When facebook POSTs into the iframe with your app url and a signed request there are two options, the easy one being that the user is already authenticated and then the signed request will have all the necessary data (including a signed request), then you just load the canvas page and use the JS SDK to get an access token there as well, but in this case there's no need to use the FB.login (since it opens a popup and will automatically close it), you can use the FB.getLoginStatus method which won't annoy the user.
If the user is not authenticated then the sign request will be missing the things you need to use the graph api.
You then redirect the user to the auth dialog, and since you are loaded in an iframe you'll need to return a html response which redirects the parent window using javascript, like:
top.location.href = "AUTH_DIALOG_URL";
When the use is done (accepted or rejected the app) he will be redirected to the "redirect_uri" you added as a parameter to the auth dialog.
If the user accepted your app then you'll be getting the "code" parameter in the query string.
You then take the code, exchange it with an access token as you posted in your question, and then redirect the user back to "apps.facebook.com/YOUR_APP".
When the page then loads the user is already authenticated and you'll be getting a full signed request.
I hope this clarifies things for you, recheck the Server-Side flow it pretty much covers it all.
I also had some trouble with that, then I found the solution here in StackOverflow.
There are two kinds of "code" provided by facebook. One comes inside the signedRequest in the cookie generated by the client-side flow. The Facebook's JS SDK handles this codes and get a access token without telling us anything.
The other type of code comes attached as a query to your redirect URI (http://www.yoururl.com/index.php?code=AAAgyiaus...), when you navigate to OAuth URL (server-side flow). With this code, you go to a Token URL and get your access token.
When you are using the server-side flow, you need to indicate a redirect URI both in the OAuth URL AND in the Token URL, and they have to be exactly the same, so a missing slash or a query string can be a lot of problem.
The codes are different from each other. When you use the both things together, appears to be impossible to get a access token using the code that was inside the cookie's signedRequest.
BUT, it is not. The magic is: the code from signedRequest is associated with NO URI, so as long as the redirect_uri is a mandatory field, all you have to do is to pass it blank when you navigate to the Token URL.
So the final solution is: grab the signedRequest from the cookie, parse it in your server to obtain the code, then read the Token URL:
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?
client_id=YOUR_APP_ID
&redirect_uri=&client_secret=YOUR_APP_SECRET
&code=CODE_INSIDE_THE_SIGNED_REQUEST
It looks like a hack, so I don't know how long it's gonna work, but it's working right now.