Describing contents of JWT token in OpenAPI - jwt

I am building a REST API that uses data in the JWT token to perform some operations. (E.g. verifying the ownership of the data, so for some cases, I might send user_id or something like that in the JWT token).
Is that possible to describe the expected contents of the JWT token using OpenAPI?

This is not supported as of OpenAPI 3.1, but there's an existing feature request:
Allow payload definition for JWT schema

Related

Decoding Keycloak JWT Token

I'm trying to validate (and read roles from) a JWT Token. Sadly I can't use any adapter or auto configuration due to my overall application architecture.
It's no problem to decode the token like any other JWT Token, but I wonder if there is a library from Keycloak to archive this goal. (For example Just Parse the token to something like a KeycloakJWTToken and verify it by grabbing the secret from Keycloak Server or so)
Any easy-to-use client or so?
I'm using the Jose4J library:
https://bitbucket.org/b_c/jose4j/wiki/Home
Reading the claims inside a JWT token is straightforward:
import org.jose4j.jwt.JwtClaims;
import org.jose4j.jwt.consumer.JwtConsumer;
import org.jose4j.jwt.consumer.JwtConsumerBuilder;
public void parseJWT(String token) throws Exception {
JwtConsumer consumer = new JwtConsumerBuilder()
.setSkipAllValidators()
.setDisableRequireSignature()
.setSkipSignatureVerification()
.build();
JwtClaims claims = consumer.processToClaims(token);
System.out.println("* Parsed token: "+ claims.getRawJson() );
System.out.println("* Expiration date: " + new Date(claims.getExpirationTime().getValueInMillis()) );
}
More examples are available on GitHub:
https://github.com/pvliesdonk/jose4j/blob/master/src/test/java/org/jose4j/examples/ExamplesTest.java
Last remark: you do not need a key nor a secret to parse the JWT, but if needed, you can use the server (public) key to verify the token was signed by the keycloak server you are trusting.
The JWT website is listing all libraries for Token Signing/Verification:
https://jwt.io/#libraries-io
Keycloak access tokens are indeed JWT tokens. So, you can make full use of existing JWT libraries, including for validation as stated in the Keycloak official documentation:
If you need to manually validate access tokens issued by Keycloak you can invoke the Introspection Endpoint. The downside to this approach is that you have to make a network invocation to the Keycloak server. This can be slow and possibily overload the server if you have too many validation requests going on at the same time. Keycloak issued access tokens are JSON Web Tokens (JWT) digitally signed and encoded using JSON Web Signature (JWS). Because they are encoded in this way, this allows you to locally validate access tokens using the public key of the issuing realm. You can either hard code the realm’s public key in your validation code, or lookup and cache the public key using the certificate endpoint with the Key ID (KID) embedded within the JWS. Depending what language you code in, there are a multitude of third party libraries out there that can help you with JWS validation.
Besides, in Java EE, using the Keycloak Java adapter, the roles are typically mapped on the user Principal and i.e. allows isUserInRole(). That's one of the goals.
Also it is possible to cast the Principal from the SecurityContext as a KeycloakPrincipal, then obtain in turn a KeycloakSecurityContext from it. Using the KeycloakSecurityContext you have access to both ID and Access tokens (when applicable) and can read their properties, attributes and claims.
Note that it is also good practice, and simply useful, to use the Keycloak UI to "evaluate" your tokens. For instance, you can see the generated token in the Client Scopes tab (under Evaluate), as well as evaluate your policies and permissions in the Authorization tab of your Client(s) (under Evaluate).
Cf. https://www.keycloak.org/docs/latest/server_admin/#_client_scopes_evaluate
That's probably the best way to debug and test, while setting up your Client(s).
If you select a user in the Evaluate screen, the following example data is generated:
Generated Access Token (...)
Generated ID Token (...)
Generated User Info (...)
All examples are generated for the particular user and issued for the particular client, with the specified value of scope parameter. The examples include all of the claims and role mappings used.
Source: https://www.keycloak.org/docs/latest/server_admin/#generating-example-tokens-and-user-info

What is the advantage of a custom API in Auth0?

Question
I got a problem with understanding some basic thing about auth0, probably someone can help me out.
In the tutorial SPA + API one of the first lines in the TDLR is this:
Both the SPA and the API must be configured in the Auth0 Dashboard
I dont understand why I need to configure the API on Auth0. My code seems to work so can anyone help me understand if I do something wrong or what the advantages are if I actually add a custom API in my dashboard?
Setup
SPA (React)
Auth0
REST API (ktor)
What I do
Created a SPA on Auth0
Login on my SPA through Auth0 to get a JWT (google token)
Sending the JWT as authentication bearer in my calls to the REST API
REST API verifies the JWT token with a JWK provider using the Auth0 url mydomain.eu.auth0.com/.well-known/jwks.json.
Authentication seems to work
Great question, I am assuming that your authentication request includes audience parameter which represents your custom API(Rest API)right now. In oauth2 terms, it is called Resource Server. Each resource server can have many permissions which you include in the scope when initiating the authentication request. Let's step back and talk about the token format. Auth0 issues token in two formats:
Opaque strings: When not using a custom API
JSON Web Tokens (JWTs): When using a custom API
https://auth0.com/docs/tokens/reference/access-token/access-token-formats#how-does-all-this-affect-the-token-format-
As explained above link, the token format depends on the audience (Custom API) parameter. Therefore, when the authentication request includes audience, auth0 issues JWT token with all necessary permission. Then, you need to validate the JWT token in your API server before returning the resources to your front end client.
It should make sense why you need to create custom API in auth0 and define permissions. If you do not create custom API in auth0, there is no way to know what kind of permission you need in the token which will generate an error(invalid audience specified)

registering a rest API with OAuth

I have written a web application which makes REST API calls to a message broker. The message broker contains already written REST APIs to which can be used to get message broker data. The message broker is written in a way in which each REST API call sends the user name and password which is encoded with base64. I need to make a login to my web app and authenticate it with OAuth.Does anyone know how to do this? How to authenticate the REST APIs with OAuth?
Step 1: Add OAuth 2.0 to your web server. This is very standard with lots of libraries available. You did not specify the Identity Provider that you will use (Google, Facebook, Auth0, Okta, etc), but each vendor has documents and libraries for you to use in your desired language.
Step 2: Add an Authorization Header to your API calls. The standard method is to add the HTTP header Authorization: Bearer access_token when making an API call.
Step 3: Add OAuth token verification to your API. When your API receives a request, it extracts the Authorization header and verifies the Bearer token. How this is done depends on the Identity Provider. For example, some vendors provide a Signed JWT (which you verify with the vendors public certificate), others provide an opaque access token (which you verify by calling the vendor's token endpoint). Add internal caching of tokens so that you don't need to verify on every API call.
If you understand OAuth 2.0 the above steps are straightforward to implement. If you don't Oracle has a set of videos which are excellent for getting started understanding OAuth.
Oracle Cloud Primers
If your desired OAuth implementation does not require users logging in and is a server to server service that you control on both ends, then you can use just part of OAuth which is Signed JWT (JWS). You create a Json data structure with your desired content and sign it with a private key. This creates a token that you can use in the above steps. You would then validate the token using your public key. You can use self-generated keypairs generated by OpenSSL or similar products for your signing and verification.

How to download a file secured with IdentityServer

I want to be able to download a file from an API call. For argument's sake, let's say it's an automagically generated PDF file.
I have two problems:
Anchor tags can't add Authorization headers to the request, only XHR can.
XHR requests cannot download files.
My solution is to write my API with an [AllowAnonymous] end point in it, which takes the access_token as a parameter. I then validate the access token by hand and return a 401 or stream the PDF.
Is there a better solution than this or, if this is the best solution, how do I validate the access_token within the API?
This approach is totally fine.
If you want to use middleware to validate the token - it depends which middleware you are using. The plain Microsoft JWT bearer middleware has some events you can implement to retrieve the token from a query string alternatively.
The identity server token validation middleware has a TokenRetriever property which also allows you to retrieve the tokens from multiple/alternative locations.

JWT. Why is it better than oAuth and what's the signature?

I'm reading about JWT and I'm confused about why there's a signature:
JWT site
What is the purpose of the signature if it's just a hashed version of the header and payload?
Also, why not just use oAuth? Or whatever 2 factor auth uses?
The purpose of Oauth2 and JWT is different, so it is not possible to compare them directly
JWT is a compact way of representing claims to be transferred between two parties (JSON with digital signature).
OAuth2 is an authorization framework used by third party applications (websites, mobile apps) to access on resources on a resource server, without exposing user password. OAuth2 can use JWT as the exchanged token
JWT is self contained and does not need server sessions . The digital signature is performed with server private key and protects the content. Any alteration of the header, the payload or the signature will be detected by the server and reject the token.