Verifying Tokens

Autentico signs all tokens with RS256 (RSA + SHA-256). Your resource server can verify tokens locally using the public key from the JWKS endpoint — no network call to Autentico is needed per request.

JWKS endpoint

GET https://auth.example.com/.well-known/jwks.json

Fetch this once at startup and cache it. Refresh it when you encounter an unknown kid in a token header.

Verification steps

For each incoming access token or ID token:

1. Decode the JWT header — get the kid (key ID)
2. Find the matching key in your JWKS cache
3. Verify the JWT signature using the RSA public key
4. Check standard claims:
   • exp — token is not expired
   • iss — matches https://auth.example.com/oauth2
   • aud — matches your client_id (ID tokens) or is acceptable for your resource (access tokens)

Example: Node.js

jose

import { createRemoteJWKSet, jwtVerify } from 'jose';

const JWKS = createRemoteJWKSet(
  new URL('https://auth.example.com/.well-known/jwks.json')
);

async function verifyToken(token) {
  const { payload } = await jwtVerify(token, JWKS, {
    issuer: 'https://auth.example.com/oauth2',
    audience: 'my-client-id', // for ID tokens
  });
  return payload; // { sub, name, email, exp, ... }
}

jsonwebtoken

import jwt from 'jsonwebtoken';
import jwksClient from 'jwks-rsa';

const client = jwksClient({
  jwksUri: 'https://auth.example.com/.well-known/jwks.json',
  cache: true,
});

function getKey(header, callback) {
  client.getSigningKey(header.kid, (err, key) => {
    callback(err, key?.getPublicKey());
  });
}

function verifyToken(token) {
  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    jwt.verify(token, getKey, {
      issuer: 'https://auth.example.com/oauth2',
      algorithms: ['RS256'],
    }, (err, decoded) => {
      err ? reject(err) : resolve(decoded);
    });
  });
}

Token introspection (alternative)

If local verification is not suitable (e.g. you need to check revocation status), use the introspection endpoint instead. It checks the token against the database and returns { "active": true/false }.

Claims reference

See Token Structure & Claims for the full list of claims in access tokens, ID tokens, and refresh tokens.