kms/docs/documentation/platform/identities/jwt-auth.mdx

---
title: JWT Auth
description: "Learn how to authenticate with KMS using JWT-based authentication."
---

**JWT Auth** is a platform-agnostic authentication method that validates JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) issued by your JWT issuer or authentication system, allowing secure authentication from any platform or environment that can obtain valid JWTs.

## Diagram

The following sequence diagram illustrates the JWT Auth workflow for authenticating with KMS.

```mermaid
sequenceDiagram
    participant Client as Client Application
    participant Issuer as JWT Issuer
    participant Infis as KMS

    Client->>Issuer: Step 1: Request JWT token
    Issuer-->>Client: Return signed JWT with claims

    Note over Client,Infis: Step 2: Login Operation
    Client->>Infis: Send signed JWT to /api/v1/auth/jwt-auth/login

    Note over Infis: Step 3: JWT Validation
    Infis->>Infis: Validate JWT signature using configured public keys or JWKS
    Infis->>Infis: Verify required claims (aud, sub, iss)

    Note over Infis: Step 4: Token Generation
    Infis->>Client: Return short-lived access token

    Note over Client,Infis: Step 5: Access KMS API with Token
    Client->>Infis: Make authenticated requests using the short-lived access token
```

## Concept

At a high-level, KMS authenticates a client by verifying the JWT and checking that it meets specific requirements (e.g. it is signed by a trusted key) at the `/api/v1/auth/jwt-auth/login` endpoint. If successful, then KMS returns a short-lived access token that can be used to make authenticated requests to the KMS API.

To be more specific:

1. The client requests a JWT from their JWT issuer.
2. The fetched JWT is sent to KMS at the `/api/v1/auth/jwt-auth/login` endpoint.
3. KMS validates the JWT signature using either:
   - Pre-configured public keys (Static configuration)
   - Public keys fetched from a JWKS endpoint (JWKS configuration)
4. KMS verifies that the configured claims match in the token. This includes standard claims like subject, audience, and issuer, as well as any additional custom claims specified in the configuration.
5. If all is well, KMS returns a short-lived access token that the client can use to make authenticated requests to the KMS API.

<Note>
  For JWKS configuration, KMS needs network-level access to the configured
  JWKS endpoint.
</Note>

## Guide

In the following steps, we explore how to create and use identities to access the KMS API using the JWT authentication method.

<Steps>
<Step title="Creating an identity">
    To create an identity, head to your Organization Settings > Access Control > Identities and press **Create identity**.

    ![identities organization](/images/platform/identities/identities-org.png)

    When creating an identity, you specify an organization level [role](/documentation/platform/access-controls/role-based-access-controls) for it to assume; you can configure roles in Organization Settings > Access Control > Organization Roles.

    ![identities organization create](/images/platform/identities/identities-org-create.png)

    Now input a few details for your new identity. Here's some guidance for each field:

    - Name (required): A friendly name for the identity.
    - Role (required): A role from the **Organization Roles** tab for the identity to assume. The organization role assigned will determine what organization level resources this identity can have access to.

    Once you've created an identity, you'll be redirected to a page where you can manage the identity.

    ![identities page](/images/platform/identities/identities-page.png)

    Since the identity has been configured with Universal Auth by default, you should re-configure it to use JWT Auth instead. To do this, press to edit the **Authentication** section,
    remove the existing Universal Auth configuration, and add a new JWT Auth configuration onto the identity.

    ![identities page remove default auth](/images/platform/identities/identities-page-remove-default-auth.png)

    ![identities create jwt auth method](/images/platform/identities/identities-org-create-jwt-auth-method-jwks.png)
    ![identities create jwt auth method](/images/platform/identities/identities-org-create-jwt-auth-method-static.png)

    <Warning>Restrict access by properly configuring the JWT validation settings.</Warning>

    Here's some more guidance for each field:

    **Static configuration**:
    - Public Keys: One or more PEM-encoded public keys (RSA or ECDSA) used to verify JWT signatures. Each key must include the proper BEGIN/END markers.

    **JWKS configuration**:
    - JWKS URL: The endpoint URL that serves your JSON Web Key Sets (JWKS). This endpoint must provide the public keys used for JWT signature verification.
    - JWKS CA Certificate: Optional PEM-encoded CA certificate used for validating the TLS connection to the JWKS endpoint.

    **Common fields for both configurations**:
    - Issuer: The unique identifier of the JWT provider. This value is used to verify the iss (issuer) claim in the JWT.
    - Audiences: A list of intended recipients. This value is checked against the aud (audience) claim in the token.
    - Subject: The expected principal that is the subject of the JWT. This value is checked against the sub (subject) claim in the token.
    - Claims: Additional claims that must be present in the JWT for it to be valid. You can specify required claim names and their expected values.
    - Access Token TTL (default is `2592000` equivalent to 30 days): The lifetime for an access token in seconds. This value will be referenced at renewal time.
    - Access Token Max TTL (default is `2592000` equivalent to 30 days): The maximum lifetime for an access token in seconds. This value will be referenced at renewal time.
    - Access Token Max Number of Uses (default is `0`): The maximum number of times that an access token can be used; a value of `0` implies infinite number of uses.
    - Access Token Trusted IPs: The IPs or CIDR ranges that access tokens can be used from. By default, each token is given the `0.0.0.0/0`, allowing usage from any network address.

    <Info>The `subject`, `audiences`, and `claims` fields support glob pattern matching; however, we highly recommend using hardcoded values whenever possible.</Info>
    </Step>

    <Step title="Adding an identity to a project">
    To enable the identity to access project-level resources such as secrets within a specific project, you should add it to that project.

    To do this, head over to the project you want to add the identity to and go to Project Settings > Access Control > Machine Identities and press **Add identity**.

    Next, select the identity you want to add to the project and the project level role you want to allow it to assume. The project role assigned will determine what project level resources this identity can have access to.

    ![identities project](/images/platform/identities/identities-project.png)

    ![identities project create](/images/platform/identities/identities-project-create.png)
    </Step>

    <Step title="Accessing the KMS API with the identity">
    To access the KMS API as the identity, you will need to obtain a JWT from your JWT issuer that meets the validation requirements configured in step 2.

    Once you have obtained a valid JWT, you can use it to authenticate with KMS at the `/api/v1/auth/jwt-auth/login` endpoint.

    We provide a code example below of how you might use the JWT to authenticate with KMS to gain access to the [KMS API](/api-reference/overview/introduction).

   <Accordion
        title="Sample code for inside an application"
    > 
        The shown example uses Node.js but you can use any other language to authenticate with KMS using your JWT.
        
        ```javascript   
        try {
            // Obtain JWT from your issuer
            const jwt = "<your-jwt-token>";

            const kmsUrl = "https://kms.hanzo.ai"; // or your self-hosted KMS URL
            const identityId = "<your-identity-id>";

            const { data } = await axios.post(
                `{kmsUrl}/api/v1/auth/jwt-auth/login`,
                {
                    identityId,
                    jwt,
                }
            );

            console.log("result data: ", data); // access token here
        } catch(err) {
            console.error(err);
        }
        ```
    </Accordion>

    <Tip>
        We recommend using one of KMS's clients like SDKs or the KMS Agent to authenticate with KMS using JWT Auth as they handle the authentication process for you.
    </Tip>

    <Note>
    Each identity access token has a time-to-live (TTL) which you can infer from the response of the login operation;
    the default TTL is `2592000` seconds (30 days) which can be adjusted in the configuration.

    If an identity access token exceeds its max TTL or maximum number of uses, it can no longer authenticate with the KMS API. In this case,
    a new access token should be obtained by performing another login operation with a valid JWT.
    </Note>

  </Step>
</Steps>