I am currently attempting to implement auth into my API and am puzzled by the concept of refresh tokens. I understand they are for generating new access tokens upon their expiration, however I am unsure as to what payload they are meant to carry and how they are meant to be stored in the DB.
Several sources have implemented refresh tokens using the same payload as the access tokens (i.e a userId). Others have implemented a session system whereby a session object is serialized and checked upon validation.
My main confusion regards the validation and invalidation of refresh tokens. Are refresh tokens meant to be stored in the DB alongside the user, such that you can check that it is valid (and not being reused)? If so, should it be deleted from the DB when a new refresh token is generated? If this is the case, how do you allow for multiple sessions across several clients? It seems wasteful to store all past refresh tokens or session objects in the DB, particularly if the expiration time of the access token is short.
Apologies for the somewhat rambling question. This topic is one I'm struggling to get a grip of so any help would be much appreciated.
First please understand the importance of JWT token , they are meant to verify the integrity of the user i.e. genuine user.
For this purpose access token are generated and verified at each request to check weather the authentic user is making that request and also these token have expiring time based on your requirement and to refresh them refresh token are used. now lets say your token have very short TTL and you make request to refresh your token with each request of refreshing these token your server has to access DB and refresh the token , if you have store serialized object in token then it would add another business logic to deserialize and check for the Userid.
therefore the you should store minimum information in these token access token as well as refresh token , and this refresh token you should store along side user with minimum information.
I have been using Flask and JWT to create authentication on my backend. Creating and using access tokens is simple enough, but I've run into some conceptual misunderstanding when trying to discover how to handle the usage and storage of refresh tokens.
Upon initial login, I distribute an access token (with 10 minute expiry) and a refresh token (with 4 day expiry). The 'jti' attribute of the refresh token is stored in a table on the database, along with its expiry date. The access token is stored in memory, and the refresh token is stored in HttpOnly cookies. When the access token expires, a "silent refresh" is sent to the backend with the refresh token. It is first checked for validity (user ID matches up, signed correctly, and is not expired), and then the database is checked to see if it contains that specific refresh token's 'jti'. If it does, then that refresh token is deleted from the database (and can therefore no longer be used) and a new access token and refresh token are sent to the user. This allows for the refresh tokens to only be single use. However, if a user logs out and logs back in repetitively, the refresh token cookie in their browser keeps getting overwritten with a new value (which is fine), but the database now contains a ton of references to "unused" refresh tokens. I'm not sure if my understanding of the JWT workflow is completely incorrect, or if this is normal.
I mainly conceptually followed this guide. Is this repetitive logging in and getting refresh tokens normal? I don't see how to manually find and remove older (but still valid) tokens that are used in the same browser.
Your implementation looks fine. It's normal that you issue new tokens for a new session. I think there are two solutions to your problem:
Add a expiration column to your table with refresh tokens. Then you will be able to remove stale jtis from the table once they're expired.
Instead of keeping information about issued refresh tokens, you can keep information about used refreshed tokens. So, when you issue the token you don't save it in the DB. When the user uses the RT, you can save the jti and expiration in the DB. Whenever a RT is used you check whether the jti is in the DB. If it is, you decline the request. You can remove entries from this table after expiration, as you verify expiration on the RT anyway.
I was worried, as you are, when implementing an Access/Refresh flow with overwritting refresh tokens (there are other strategies,as keeping a blacklist and a whitelist).
I discovered that there were two ways to end with "unused" refresh tokens (as you say) or, as I prefer to name them, "stalled" refresh token (you will see why in a second):
First way: LogOut
As you detected Log Out can lead to stalled refreshed tokens in the database.
Probably, you, as me, (and 90% reading this answer) were just "logging out" from the Client side, aka "deleting Access and Refresh tokens" from the client memory/cookies/localstorage and done. Right? Why so?
However, you can send a "/logout" request to your server with your access token (to authenticate) and your refresh token (in the body), so you can delete the refresh token from the database. I would not pass the JTI, but the whole refresh token (after all it is going to be erased shortly afterwards, so no issues if anyone intercepts it with a MIM attack). This way you can double check the user requesting the /logout is exactly the owner of the refresh token (as a security measure), this security check would be lost if you send just the JTI value (which could lead to an attack: an user requesting a refresh token to be erased, through its JTI, from other user). (Yes you can use the JTI to perform a database check to know its owner, but each time the server performs a database call "God kills a kitten", while you can easily compare the user_id in the access against the user_id in refresh token)
Performing a /logout call, each time the user "/logout" you are really killing her refresh token from the database. And hence the ability to create access tokens if the refresh token got compromised (or sniffed) before the user performed a /logout. If an attacker got the "unused" refresh token, even if the user logged out, could exchange it for a refresh and access token again. Let's reduce the "number of refresh tokens" able to create access tokens for an user.
Second Way: Expired Tokens
A second way to have a "stalled" token is when the client tries to /refresh but the refresh token is already expired. In such case, dont just return an error code that will be used by your app to send the user to the Log In page, but also delete the refresh token from the database. Why do you need to keep it? This cleanup strategy reduces the size of your table and helps to clean your database of already expired refresh tokens. You, ofc, will need a script to clean refresh tokens from users "never-returning" to your app or from users who decided to delete localstorage/cookies, but ey! your cleanup script will be fast as hell now.
This second way is the reason I prefer to call all of them "stalled" because they are sitting there (ones being "unused", others being "expired") and filling your table.
Hope these strategies help your security concerns, a pleasure to meet someone as "geek" as me regarding JWT security.
I am facing a problem in a JWT scenario. When a user logs into the system through a web app, I generate a JWT access token (JWT auth) and a custom refresh token and save the refresh token in DB for later verification. But the problem is that when the same user logs in through the mobile app, it replaces the new refresh token in DB which invalidates the previous refresh token stored in the web's local storage.
I want to know how to deal with this problem. Do I need to create a separate table in DB for user refresh tokens and check them out or is there another better approach?
The best approach is to save more than one refresh token per user in a separate table with a foreign key to the user. That way you can have many refresh tokens associated with a user (and also other information about each refresh token, such as an expiry date) that can also help when implementing revocation (you'll have more information to present the user when choosing which token to revoke).
I am using IdentityServer4 Implicit flow for my Angular application. I have permissions claim added to scope list and also it gets populated properly.
i need to update this claim value whenever i change the value in database.
currently, the claim value is refreshed only when access_token is refreshed/renewed.
I want to check/update claims on every call to api.
Two things:
You are mixing authentication with authorization. The permission claims should not be present in the Access token. Please read here why. And read my answer here for some thoughts about a possible design.
You can't change a JWT.
An access token contains information about the client and the user (if
present). It is a self-contained code that can be decoded by the
server only and has a certain lifetime.
Please note that the refresh token does not really refresh the access token, it creates a new token. The original token remains valid until it expires. An alternative is to use Reference Tokens.
I'm referencing another SO post that discusses using refresh tokens with JWT.
JWT (JSON Web Token) automatic prolongation of expiration
I have an application with a very common architecture where my clients (web and mobile) talk to a REST API which then talks to a service layer and data layer.
I understand JWT token authentication, but I am a little confused at how I should use refresh tokens.
I want my JWT authentication to have the following properties:
JWT Token has an expiration of 2 hours.
The token is refreshed every hour by the client.
If the user token is not refreshed (user is inactive and the app is not open) and expires, they will need to log in whenever they want to resume.
I see a lot of people claiming to make this a better experience using the concept of a refresh token, however, I don't see the benefit of this. It seems like an added complexity having to manage it.
My questions are the following:
If I WERE to use a refresh token, wouldn't it still be beneficial to have a long term expiration for good practice on that token as well?
If I WERE to use a refresh token, would that token be persisted with the userId and/or JWT token?
When I update my token every 1 hour, how does this work? Will I want to create an endpoint that takes in my JWT token or my refresh token? Will this update the expiration date of my original JWT token, or create a new token?
Is there the need for a refresh token given these details? It seems that If the user is just using a JWT token to grab a new token (per the link above) then the refresh token is obsolete.
Let me come to your questions a little later down the line and start by actually discussing the whole purpose of a refresh token.
So the situation is:
The user opens the app and provides his login credentials. Now, most probably the app is interacting with a REST backend service. REST is stateless, there isn't a way to authorize access to the APIs. Hence, so far in the discussion, there is no way to check if an authorized user is accessing the APIs or is just some random requests coming through.
Now to be able to solve this problem, we need a way to know that the requests are coming from an authorized user. So, what we did was to introduce something called an access token. So now once the user is authenticated successfully, he is issued an access token. This token is supposed to be a long and highly random token (to ensure that it can not be guessed). This is where the JWT comes into the picture. Now you may/may not want to store any user-specific details in a JWT token. Ideally, you would want to just store very simple, extremely non-sensitive details in the JWT. The manipulation of the JWT hash to retrieve other user's details (IDOR etc.) is taken care of by JWT (the library being used) itself.
So, for now, our problem with authorized access is solved.
Now we talk of an attack scenario. Let's say using all of the above user Alice, using the app, has the authorized access token and now her app can make requests to all the APIs and retrieve the data as per her authorization.
Assume that SOMEHOW Alice loses the Access Token or put another way, an adversary, Bob, gets access to Alice's access token. Now Bob, despite being unauthorized, can make requests to all the APIs that Alice was authorized to.
SOMETHING WE IDEALLY DON'T WANT.
Now the solution to this problem is :
Either detect that there is something of this sort happening.
Reduce the attack window itself.
Using just the access token alone, it is hard to achieve condition 1 above, because be it Alice or Bob, it's the same authorized token being used and hence requests form the two users are not distinguishable.
So we try achieving 2 above and hence we add an expiration to the validity of the access token, say the access token is valid for 't' (short-lived) time.
How does it help? Well, even if Bob has the access token, he can use it only while it is valid. As soon as it expires, he will have to retrieve it again. Now, of course, you could say that he can get it the same way he got it the first time. But then again there's nothing like 100% security!
The above approach still has a problem and in some cases an unacceptable one. When the access token expires, it would require the user to enter his login credentials and obtain an authorized access token again, which at least in case of mobile apps, is a bad (not acceptable) user experience.
Solution: This is where the refresh token comes in. It is again a random unpredictable token that is also issued to the app along with the access token in the first place. This refresh token is a very long-lived special token, which makes sure that as soon as the access token expires, it requests the server for a new access token, thus removing the need for the user to re-enter his login credentials to retrieve a new authorized access token, once an existing one has expired.
Now you may ask, Bob can have access to the refresh token as well, similar to the way he compromised the access token. YES. He can. However, now it becomes easy to identify such an incidence, which was not possible in the case of an access token alone, and take the necessary action to reduce the damage done.
How?
For every authenticated user (in case of a mobile app, generally), a one to one mapped refresh token and access token pair is issued to the app. So at any given point in time, for a single authenticated user, there will be only one access token corresponding to a refresh token. Now assume that if Bob has compromised the refresh token, he would be using it to generate an access token (because access token is the only thing which is authorized to access resources through the APIs). As soon as Bob (attacker) requests with the newly generated access token because Alice's (genuine user) access token is still valid, the server would see this as an anomaly, because for a single refresh token there can be only one authorized access token at a time. Identifying the anomaly, the server would destroy the refresh token in question and along with it all, it's associated access tokens will also get invalidated. Thus preventing any further access, genuine or malicious, to any authorization requiring resources.
The user, Alice, would be required to once again authenticate with her credentials and fetch a valid pair of a refresh and access tokens.
Of course, you could still argue that Bob could once again get access to both refresh and access tokens and repeat the entire story above, potentially leading to a DoS on Alice, the actual genuine customer, but then again there is nothing like 100% security.
Also as a good practice, the refresh token should have an expiry, although a pretty long one.
I believe for this scenario you could work with the access token alone, making
life easier for your clients but keeping the security benefits of a refresh token.
This is how it would work:
When your user logs in with credentials (username/password) you return a
short-lived JWT. You also create a db record where you store:
JWT id
user id
IP address
user agent
a valid flag (defaults to TRUE)
createdAt
updatedAt
Your client submits the JWT in every request. As long as the JWT hasn't expired,
it has access to the resources. If the JWT expired, you refresh it
behind the scenes and return both the resource and an additional X-JWT header
with the new JWT.
When the client receives a response with an X-JWT header, it discards the
old JWT and uses the new one for future requests.
How refreshing the JWT works on the server
Look for the matching db record using the JWT id.
Check if the valid flag is still true, otherwise reject.
Optionally, you can compare the request IP address and user agent against
the stored IP address and user agent, and decide to reject if something looks
fishy.
Optionally, you can check the db record's createdAt or updatedAt fields, and
decide not to refresh if too much time has passed.
Update the updatedAt field in the db record.
Return the new JWT (which is basically a copy of the expired JWT, but with an extended expiration time).
This design would also give you the option to revoke all tokens for a user (for
example, if the user loses his phone or updates his password).
Benefits:
Your client never has to check expiration times or make refresh token
requests, all it does is check for an X-JWT header on responses.
You can add custom refresh logic based on IP address, user agent, max-token
age, or a combination of those.
You can revoke some or all tokens for a user.
If I WERE to use a refresh token, wouldn't it still be beneficial to have a long term expiration for good practice on that token as well?
Refresh Tokens are long-lived, Access Tokens are short-lived.
If I WERE to use a refresh token, would that token be persisted with the userId and/or JWT token?
It would be persisted as a separate token on the client, alongside JWT but not inside JWT. UserID/UID can be stored inside the JWT token itself.
When I update my token every 1 hour, how does this work? Will I want to create an endpoint that takes in my JWT token or my refresh token? Will this update the expiration date of my original JWT token, or create a new token?
Yes, you need a separate service that issues and refreshes token. It won't update the expiration of the existing JWT Token. A token is simply JSON field-value pairs that are base64 encoded. So changing the data, changes the output. The token also has the issue date, which will at the very least change on every fresh issue (refresh). So every token will be unique and new. The old tokens will auto-expire, hence you need expiration on all Access Tokens, otherwise they will linger around forever.
The other answer here states that old tokens get destroyed when you issue a new token. That's simply not the case. Tokens cannot be destroyed. In fact, you can harvest hundreds of tokens by constantly contacting the auth server and asking for new fresh tokens using your Refresh Token. Each of those Access Tokens will be valid till their expiry. So expiry is imperative, and it should be short.
Is there really the need for a refresh token given these details? It seems that If the user is just using a JWT token to grab a new token (per the link above) then the refresh token is obsolete.
JWT tokens have client claims. For example is_manager:true claim on a JWT token might allow access to manager-level features. Now if you decide to demote the user from manager to contractor, that won't take effect immediately. The user may still be using the old token. Finally when that expires, he hits the auth server to refresh his token. The auth server issues a new token without the managerial claim and the user won't be able to access managerial features any more. This creates a window during which the user's claims are not in sync with the server. This again explains why Access Tokens should be short-lived so sync'ing can happen often.
Essentially you are updating the authorization checks every 15 minutes, instead of checking them on every single request (which is how typical session-based auth works). If you want real-time permissions instead of every-15-minute refreshes, then JWT may not be a good fit.