RSA encryption added to the Nimbus JOSE + JWT library

28 March 2013

The new 2.13 release of the Java library for Javascript Object Signing and Encryption (JOSE) and JSON Web Tokens (JWT) adds support for RSA encryption.

You can now create encrypted payloads and tokens with RSAES-PKCS1-V1_5 and RSAES-OAEP, using the authenticated AES/CBC+HMAC and AES/GCM encryption methods.

The following example demonstrates the typical lifecycle of an encrypted JWT, secured with RSA-OAEP and 128-bit AES/GCM.

// Compose the JWT claims set
JWTClaimsSet jwtClaims = new JWTClaimsSet();
jwtClaims.setIssuer("https://openid.net");
jwtClaims.setSubject("alice");
List<String> aud = new ArrayList<String>();
aud.add("https://app-one.com");
aud.add("https://app-two.com");
jwtClaims.setAudience(aud);
// Set expiration in 10 minutes
jwtClaims.setExpirationTime(new Date(new Date().getTime() + 1000*60*10));
jwtClaims.setNotBeforeTime(new Date());
jwtClaims.setIssueTime(new Date());
jwtClaims.setJWTID(UUID.randomUUID().toString());

System.out.println(jwtClaims.toJSONObject());
// Produces
// {
//   "iss" : "https:\/\/openid.net",
//   "sub" : "alice",
//   "aud" : [ "https:\/\/app-one.com" , "https:\/\/app-two.com" ],
//   "exp" : 1364293137871,
//   "nbf" : 1364292537871,
//   "iat" : 1364292537871,
//   "jti" : "165a7bab-de06-4695-a2dd-9d8d6b40e443"
// }

// Request JWT encrypted with RSA-OAEP and 128-bit AES/GCM
JWEHeader header = new JWEHeader(JWEAlgorithm.RSA_OAEP, EncryptionMethod.A128GCM);

// Create the encrypted JWT object
EncryptedJWT jwt = new EncryptedJWT(header, jwtClaims);

// Create an encrypter with the specified public RSA key
RSAEncrypter encrypter = new RSAEncrypter(publicKey);

// Do the actual encryption
jwt.encrypt(encrypter);

// Serialise to JWT compact form
String jwtString = jwt.serialize();

System.out.println(jwtString);
// Produces
//
// eyJhbGciOiJSU0EtT0FFUCIsImVuYyI6IkExMjhHQ00ifQ.K52jFwAQJH-
// DxMhtaq7sg5tMuot_mT5dm1DR_01wj6ZUQQhJFO02vPI44W5nDjC5C_v4p
// W1UiJa3cwb5y2Rd9kSvb0ZxAqGX9c4Z4zouRU57729ML3V05UArUhck9Zv
// ssfkDW1VclingL8LfagRUs2z95UkwhiZyaKpmrgqpKX8azQFGNLBvEjXnx
// -xoDFZIYwHOno290HOpig3aUsDxhsioweiXbeLXxLeRsivaLwUWRUZfHRC
// _HGAo8KSF4gQZmeJtRgai5mz6qgbVkg7jPQyZFtM5_ul0UKHE2y0AtWm8I
// zDE_rbAV14OCRZJ6n38X5urVFFE5sdphdGsNlA.gjI_RIFWZXJwaO9R.oa
// E5a-z0N1MW9FBkhKeKeFa5e7hxVXOuANZsNmBYYT8G_xlXkMD0nz4fIaGt
// uWd3t9Xp-kufvvfD-xOnAs2SBX_Y1kYGPto4mibBjIrXQEjDsKyKwndxzr
// utN9csmFwqWhx1sLHMpJkgsnfLTi9yWBPKH5Krx23IhoDGoSfqOquuhxn0
// y0WkuqH1R3z-fluUs6sxx9qx6NFVS1NRQ-LVn9sWT5yx8m9AQ_ng8MBWz2
// BfBTV0tjliV74ogNDikNXTAkD9rsWFV0IX4IpA.sOLijuVySaKI-FYUaBy
// wpg

// Parse back
jwt = EncryptedJWT.parse(jwtString);

// Create a decrypter with the specified private RSA key
RSADecrypter decrypter = new RSADecrypter(privateKey);

// Decrypt
jwt.decrypt(decrypter);

// Retrieve JWT claims
System.out.println(jwt.getJWTClaimsSet().getIssuer());;
System.out.println(jwt.getJWTClaimsSet().getSubject());
System.out.println(jwt.getJWTClaimsSet().getAudience().size());
System.out.println(jwt.getJWTClaimsSet().getExpirationTime());
System.out.println(jwt.getJWTClaimsSet().getNotBeforeTime());
System.out.println(jwt.getJWTClaimsSet().getIssueTime());
System.out.println(jwt.getJWTClaimsSet().getJWTID());\

Check out src/test/java/com/nimbusds/jwt/EncryptedJWTTest.java for the complete code.

Don’t forget excellent JavaDocs that come with the library. They have full description of all classes and methods, references to the applicable JOSE and other spec sections as well as short code snippets.

Thanks for Axel Nennker, David Ortiz and Juraj Somorovsky from the JOSE community who contributed with concrete code and suggestions.

Note that the current A128CBC+HS256 and A256CBC+HS512 specifications may get revised by the JOSE WG to switch to draft-mcgrew-aead-aes-cbc-hmac-sha2-01 for appending authenticated encryption to AES/CBC.