How to verify JWT from AWS Cognito in the API backend?

I'm building a system consisting of an Angular2 single page app and a REST API running on ECS. The API runs on .Net/Nancy, but that might well change.

I would like to give Cognito a try and this is how I imagined the authentication workflow:

1. SPA signs in user and receives a JWT
2. SPA sends JWT to REST API with every request
3. REST API verfies that the JWT is authentic

My question is about step 3. How can my server (or rather: my stateless, auto-scaled, load-balanced Docker containers) verify that the token is authentic? Since the "server" hasn't issued the JWT itself, it can't use its own secret (as described in the basic JWT example here).

I have read through the Cognito docs and googled a lot, but I can't find any good guideline about what to do with the JWT on the server side.

Turns out I didn't read the docs right. It's explained here (scroll down to "Using ID Tokens and Access Tokens in your Web APIs").

The API service can download Cognito's secrets and use them to verify received JWT's. Perfect.

Edit

@Groady's comment is on point: but how do you validate the tokens? I'd say use a battle-tested library like jose4j or nimbus (both Java) for that and don't implement the verification from scratch yourself.

Here's an example implementation for Spring Boot using nimbus that got me started when I recently had to implement this in java/dropwizard service.

Here's a way to verify the signature on NodeJS:

var jwt = require('jsonwebtoken');
var jwkToPem = require('jwk-to-pem');
var pem = jwkToPem(jwk);
jwt.verify(token, pem, function(err, decoded) {
  console.log(decoded)
});


// Note : You can get jwk from https://cognito-idp.{region}.amazonaws.com/{userPoolId}/.well-known/jwks.json 

Execute an Authorization Code Grant Flow

Assuming that you:

• have correctly configured a user pool in AWS Cognito, and

• are able to signup/login and get an access code via:

  https://<your-domain>.auth.us-west-2.amazoncognito.com/login?response_type=code&client_id=<your-client-id>&redirect_uri=<your-redirect-uri>
  

Your browser should redirect to <your-redirect-uri>?code=4dd94e4f-3323-471e-af0f-dc52a8fe98a0

---

Now you need to pass that code to your back-end and have it request a token for you.

POST https://<your-domain>.auth.us-west-2.amazoncognito.com/oauth2/token

• set your Authorization header to Basic and use username=<app client id> and password=<app client secret> per your app client configured in AWS Cognito
• set the following in your request body:
  • grant_type=authorization_code
  • code=<your-code>
  • client_id=<your-client-id>
  • redirect_uri=<your-redirect-uri>

If successful, your back-end should receive a set of base64 encoded tokens.

{
    id_token: '...',
    access_token: '...',
    refresh_token: '...',
    expires_in: 3600,
    token_type: 'Bearer'
}

---

Now, according to the documentation, your back-end should validate the JWT signature by:

1. Decoding the ID token
2. Comparing the local key ID (kid) to the public kid
3. Using the public key to verify the signature using your JWT library.

Since AWS Cognito generates two pairs of RSA cryptograpic keys for each user pool, you need to figure out which key was used to encrypt the token.

Here's a NodeJS snippet that demonstrates verifying a JWT.

import jsonwebtoken from 'jsonwebtoken'
import jwkToPem from 'jwk-to-pem'

const jsonWebKeys = [  // from https://cognito-idp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/<UserPoolId>/.well-known/jwks.json
    {
        "alg": "RS256",
        "e": "AQAB",
        "kid": "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPabc/1A2B3CZ5x6y7MA56Cy+6ubf=",
        "kty": "RSA",
        "n": "...",
        "use": "sig"
    },
    {
        "alg": "RS256",
        "e": "AQAB",
        "kid": "XYZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA/1A2B3CZ5x6y7MA56Cy+6abc=",
        "kty": "RSA",
        "n": "...",
        "use": "sig"
    }
]

function validateToken(token) {
    const header = decodeTokenHeader(token);  // {"kid":"XYZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA/1A2B3CZ5x6y7MA56Cy+6abc=", "alg": "RS256"}
    const jsonWebKey = getJsonWebKeyWithKID(header.kid);
    verifyJsonWebTokenSignature(token, jsonWebKey, (err, decodedToken) => {
        if (err) {
            console.error(err);
        } else {
            console.log(decodedToken);
        }
    })
}

function decodeTokenHeader(token) {
    const [headerEncoded] = token.split('.');
    const buff = new Buffer(headerEncoded, 'base64');
    const text = buff.toString('ascii');
    return JSON.parse(text);
}

function getJsonWebKeyWithKID(kid) {
    for (let jwk of jsonWebKeys) {
        if (jwk.kid === kid) {
            return jwk;
        }
    }
    return null
}

function verifyJsonWebTokenSignature(token, jsonWebKey, clbk) {
    const pem = jwkToPem(jsonWebKey);
    jsonwebtoken.verify(token, pem, {algorithms: ['RS256']}, (err, decodedToken) => clbk(err, decodedToken))
}


validateToken('xxxxxxxxx.XXXXXXXX.xxxxxxxx')

Short answer:
You can get the public key for your user pool from the following endpoint:
https://cognito-idp.{region}.amazonaws.com/{userPoolId}/.well-known/jwks.json
If you successfully decode the token using this public key then the token is valid else it is forged.

Long answer:
After you successfully authenticate via cognito, you get your access and id tokens. Now you want to validate whether this token has been tampered with or not. Traditionally we would send these tokens back to the authentication service (which issued this token at the first place) to check if the token is valid. These systems use symmetric key encryption algorithms such as HMAC to encrypt the payload using a secret key and so only this system is capable to tell if this token is valid or not.
Traditional auth JWT token Header:

{
   "alg": "HS256",
   "typ": "JWT"
}

Note here that encryption algorithm used here is symmetric - HMAC + SHA256

But modern authentication systems like Cognito use asymmetric key encryption algorithms such as RSA to encrypt the payload using a pair of public and private key. Payload is encrypted using a private key but can be decoded via public key. Major advantage of using such an algorithm is that we don't have to request a single authentication service to tell if a token is valid or not. Since everyone has access to the public key, anyone can verify validity of token. The load for validation is fairly distributed and there is no single point of failure.
Cognito JWT token header:

{
  "kid": "abcdefghijklmnopqrsexample=",
  "alg": "RS256"
}

Asymmetric encryption algorithm used in this case - RSA + SHA256

cognito-jwt-verifier is a tiny npm package to verify ID and access JWT tokens obtained from AWS Cognito in your node/Lambda backend with minimal dependencies.

Disclaimer: I'm the author of this. I came up with it because I couldn't find anything checking all the boxes for me:

• minimal dependencies
• framework agnostic
• JWKS (public keys) caching
• test coverage

Usage (see github repo for a more detailed example):

const { verifierFactory } = require('@southlane/cognito-jwt-verifier')
 
const verifier = verifierFactory({
  region: 'us-east-1',
  userPoolId: 'us-east-1_PDsy6i0Bf',
  appClientId: '5ra91i9p4trq42m2vnjs0pv06q',
  tokenType: 'id', // either "access" or "id"
})

const token = 'eyJraWQiOiI0UFFoK0JaVE...' // clipped 
 
try {
  const tokenPayload = await verifier.verify(token)
} catch (e) {
  // catch error and act accordingly, e.g. throw HTTP 401 error
}

I had a similar problem but without using the API Gateway. In my case I wanted to verify the signature of a JWT token obtained via the AWS Cognito Developer Authenticated identity route.

Like many posters on various sites I had trouble piecing together exactly the bits I needs to verify the signature of an AWS JWT token externally i.e., server side or via script

I think I figured out out and put a gist to verify an AWS JWT token signature. It'll verify an AWS JWT/JWS token with either pyjwt or PKCS1_v1_5c from Crypto.Signature in PyCrypto

So, yes this was python in my case but it's also doable easily in node (npm install jsonwebtoken jwk-to-pem request).

I attempted to highlight some gotchas in the comments because when I was trying to figure this out I was mostly doing the right thing but there were some nuances like python dict ordering, or lack there of, and json representation.

Hopefully it may help somebody somewhere.

AWS released a NodeJS library specifically for this purpose: https://github.com/awslabs/aws-jwt-verify.

The library has similar machinery to other libraries out there and mentioned here, such as automatically downloading, and caching, the JWKS (the public keys with which Cognito JWTs can be verified). It's written in pure TypeScript and has 0 dependencies.

import { CognitoJwtVerifier } from "aws-jwt-verify";

// Verifier that expects valid access tokens:
const verifier = CognitoJwtVerifier.create({
  userPoolId: "<user_pool_id>",
  tokenUse: "access",
  clientId: "<client_id>",
});

try {
  const payload = await verifier.verify(
    "eyJraWQeyJhdF9oYXNoIjoidk..." // the JWT as string
  );
  console.log("Token is valid. Payload:", payload);
} catch {
  console.log("Token not valid!");
}

(By the way, the library also includes a class that works for other identity providers than Cognito)

Disclaimer: I'm one of the authors of the library. We're looking forward to customer feedback––do leave us a GitHub issue.

You can get insights from the Lambda code here

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cognito/latest/developerguide/amazon-cognito-user-pools-using-tokens-verifying-a-jwt.html

https://github.com/awslabs/aws-support-tools/tree/master/Cognito/decode-verify-jwt

In Golang https://gist.github.com/tmaiaroto/e2ee5e88fc6ae035307d7c5ee71a99cf

this is working for me in dot net 4.5

    public static bool VerifyCognitoJwt(string accessToken)
    {
        string[] parts = accessToken.Split('.');

        string header = parts[0];
        string payload = parts[1];

        string headerJson = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(Base64UrlDecode(header));
        JObject headerData = JObject.Parse(headerJson);

        string payloadJson = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(Base64UrlDecode(payload));
        JObject payloadData = JObject.Parse(payloadJson);

        var kid = headerData["kid"];
        var iss = payloadData["iss"];

        var issUrl = iss + "/.well-known/jwks.json";
        var keysJson= string.Empty;

        using (WebClient wc = new WebClient())
        {
            keysJson = wc.DownloadString(issUrl);
        }

        var keyData = GetKeyData(keysJson,kid.ToString());

        if (keyData==null)
            throw new ApplicationException(string.Format("Invalid signature"));

        var modulus = Base64UrlDecode(keyData.Modulus);
        var exponent = Base64UrlDecode(keyData.Exponent);

        RSACryptoServiceProvider provider = new RSACryptoServiceProvider();

        var rsaParameters= new RSAParameters();
        rsaParameters.Modulus = new BigInteger(modulus).ToByteArrayUnsigned();
        rsaParameters.Exponent = new BigInteger(exponent).ToByteArrayUnsigned();

        provider.ImportParameters(rsaParameters);

        SHA256CryptoServiceProvider sha256 = new SHA256CryptoServiceProvider();
        byte[] hash = sha256.ComputeHash(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(parts[0] + "." + parts[1]));

        RSAPKCS1SignatureDeformatter rsaDeformatter = new RSAPKCS1SignatureDeformatter(provider);
        rsaDeformatter.SetHashAlgorithm(sha256.GetType().FullName);

        if (!rsaDeformatter.VerifySignature(hash, Base64UrlDecode(parts[2])))
            throw new ApplicationException(string.Format("Invalid signature"));

        return true;
    }

 public class KeyData
    {
        public string Modulus { get; set; }
        public string Exponent { get; set; }
    }

    private static KeyData GetKeyData(string keys,string kid)
    {
        var keyData = new KeyData();

        dynamic obj = JObject.Parse(keys);
        var results = obj.keys;
        bool found = false;

        foreach (var key in results)
        {
            if (found)
                break;

            if (key.kid == kid)
            {
                keyData.Modulus = key.n;
                keyData.Exponent = key.e;
                found = true;
            }
        }

        return keyData;
    }

Someone also wrote a python package called cognitojwt that works in both async/sync mode to decode and verify Amazon Cognito JWT.

This is based on the elaborate explanation from Derek (answer). I have been able to create a working sample for PHP.

I have used https://github.com/firebase/php-jwt for pem creation and code verification.

This code is used after you received a set of base64 encoded tokens.

<?php

require_once(__DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php');

use Firebase\JWT\JWT;
use Firebase\JWT\JWK;
use Firebase\JWT\ExpiredException;
use Firebase\JWT\SignatureInvalidException;
use Firebase\JWT\BeforeValidException;

function debugmsg($msg, $output) {
	print_r($msg . "\n");
}

$tokensReceived = array(
    'id_token' => '...',
    'access_token' => '...',
    'refresh_token' => '...',
    'expires_in' => 3600,
    'token_type' => 'Bearer'
);

$idToken = $tokensReceived['id_token'];

// 'https://cognito-idp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/<pool-id>/.well-known/jwks.json'
$keys = json_decode('<json string received from jwks.json>');

$idTokenHeader = json_decode(base64_decode(explode('.', $idToken)[0]), true);
print_r($idTokenHeader);

$remoteKey = null;

$keySets = JWK::parseKeySet($keys);

$remoteKey = $keySets[$idTokenHeader['kid']];

try {
	print_r("result: ");
	$decoded = JWT::decode($idToken, $remoteKey, array($idTokenHeader['alg']));
	print_r($decoded);
} catch(Firebase\JWT\ExpiredException $e) {
	debugmsg("ExpiredException","cognito");
} catch(Firebase\JWT\SignatureInvalidException $e) {
	debugmsg("SignatureInvalidException","cognito");
} catch(Firebase\JWT\BeforeValidException $e) {
	debugmsg("BeforeValidException","cognito");
}

?>