Verifying Azure Active Directory JWT Tokens

When working with OAuth and Open ID Connect, there are times when you’ll want to inspect the contents of id, access or refresh tokens. The website https://jwt.io is useful as you can drop in the token in the pane on the left, and the site dynamically decodes the header, body and signature for the JWT.

Unfortunately by itself the signature on the JWT can’t be verified as the website doesn’t know what key to use to validate the signature. The header of the JWT does provide information about the algorithm used (ie RS256) and the id of the key used but this by itself isn’t enough to locate the key to be used.

As RS256 is a public/private key algorithm, there is a private key, which the issuer holds, and a public key which is available to anyone to access. The former is used to generate the signature for a JWT; the later can then be used to validate the signature. To find the public key to use to validate the signature I’ll start with the OpenID Connect configuration document, which is available for any tenant at:

https://login.microsoftonline.com/{tenantId}/.well-known/openid-configuration

eg https://login.microsoftonline.com/nicksdemodir.onmicrosoft.com/.well-known/openid-configuration

The returned configuration document contains an attribute, jwks_uri, which points at https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/discovery/keys

Loading the jwks_uri returns another JSON document which lists a number of keys. Now we can use the kid from the header of the JWT to identify which key to use, in this case the first key in the list.

Attempting to simply copy the x5c value from the list of keys into the Public Key or Certificate box on the jwt.io website will still not verify the signature of the JWT. In order to verify the signature, wrap the key in BEGIN and END CERTIFICATE markers as follows:

—–BEGIN CERTIFICATE—–
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
—–END CERTIFICATE—–

Entering the wrapped key into the Public Key or Certificate box on the jwt.io website will successfully verify the signature of the JWT.