JWT Authentication

Webex Connect supports the use of JWT within the Core SDK and Thread, Topic and Segment APIs. JWT provides additional security by providing a mechanism to restrict resource access to authorized users.

For detailed information on JWT, visit jwt.io.

Note that Webex Connect only currently supports the SHA256 algorithm which uses a pre-shared secret key. The key is configured during creation of a mobile/web app asset within the Webex Connect platform.

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Enabling JWT Authentication for Thread, Topic, and Segment APIs
As a security best practice, we recommend that you enable JWT authentication. It is an optional feature and is not enabled by default. Please send an email to the support team to enable JWT authentication for Thread, Topic, and Segment APIs for your tenant if you'd like to use it. Once it's been enabled by the Support team, you will need to enable the JWT authentication option on the mobile/web app asset configuration page.

Token Format.

JWT Token Header

The following table lists the supported header attributes:

Attribute	Value	Notes
alg	HS256	Specifies the signing algorithm used, Webex Connect currently only supports HS256.
typ	JWT	The token type, always JWT.

Example Token Header

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

Token Payload

The following table lists the JWT claims which are supported within the token payload:

Claim	Example Value	Notes
exp	1584525821	Optional - This claim specifies the expiration time of the token expressed as seconds since the epoch. Although Webex Connect does not enforce a maximum duration it is best practice to keep this as short a duration as possible for your use case.
appId	TR21063826	Mandatory - This claim must be set to the id of your app asset as configured within the Webex Connect tenant portal. This will be validated before requests are serviced.
userId	67deb017-5038-4832-a6b9-aa7e00987b6f	Optional - When specified this claim must match the id of the user within Webex Connect and, if the resource being accessed is user centric, the value will be validated before requests are serviced. User ids are an arbitrary string value assigned to an app / device profile during SDK registration.
customerId	23bcd542-1562-7431-c329-ca54ae111c31	Optional - When specified the value of this claim must match the ID of the customer profile. This attribute is only validated when performing linking / unlinking with a customer profile. See updateProfileData updateDeviceProfileParam.

Example Payload

{
  "exp": 1584525821,
  "appId": "TR21063826",
  "userId": "67deb017-5038-4832-a6b9-aa7e00987b6f"
}

JWT Token Signature

The following example demonstrates how a signature is generated:

HMACSHA256(
  base64UrlEncode(header) + "." +
  base64UrlEncode(payload),
  secret)

Sample JWT token

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NOTE

The secret key must be base64 encoded before entering in the app asset configuration page.

The length of the secret key before encoding must be at least 256 bits (32 bytes).

JWT validation errors

If an SDK method call fails because of a JWT validation error then an exception is generated with one of the following error codes:

ICErrorCode enum	Ordinal Value	Description
TokenInvalid	38	The provided token is invalid, check that the token has been generated using the correct format and contains valid data.
TokenRequired	39	A token is expected but is missing.
TokenExpired	40	The token has expired.