How to verify a JWT using python PyJWT with a public PEM cert?

Question

I recently upgraded from PyJWT 0.4.1 to 1.0.1 and I can't figure out how to verify a JWT signed with a public key.

My code looks like this:

import jwt
cert_string = "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----\nMIICITCCAYqgAwIBAgIIBEsUSxL..."
token_string = "eyJhbGciOiJSUzI1NiIsImtpZCI6I..."
jwt.decode(token_string, cert_string, algorithms=['RS256'])

The error I get is:

File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "~/.virtualenvs/project/lib/python2.7/site-packages/jwt/api.py", line 117, in decode                            
key, algorithms, **kwargs)                                                                                         
File "~/.virtualenvs/project/lib/python2.7/site-packages/jwt/api.py", line 176, in _verify_signature                 
key = alg_obj.prepare_key(key)                                                                                     
File "~/.virtualenvs/project/lib/python2.7/site-packages/jwt/algorithms.py", line 165, in prepare_key                
key = load_pem_public_key(key, backend=default_backend())                                                          
File "~/.virtualenvs/project/lib/python2.7/site-packages/cryptography/hazmat/primitives/serialization.py", line 24, in load_pem_public_key
return backend.load_pem_public_key(data)                                                                           
File "~/.virtualenvs/project/lib/python2.7/site-packages/cryptography/hazmat/backends/multibackend.py", line 285, in load_pem_public_key
return b.load_pem_public_key(data)
File "~/.virtualenvs/project/lib/python2.7/site-packages/cryptography/hazmat/backends/openssl/backend.py", line 716, in load_pem_public_key
self._handle_key_loading_error()
File "~/.virtualenvs/project/lib/python2.7/site-packages/cryptography/hazmat/backends/openssl/backend.py", line 912, in _handle_key_loading_error
raise ValueError("Could not unserialize key data.")                                                                
ValueError: Could not unserialize key data.

I'm confident my cert_string and token are good. The following code runs OK:

from cryptography.x509 import load_pem_x509_certificate
from cryptography.hazmat.backends import default_backend
load_pem_x509_certificate(cert_string, default_backend())

My code that used to work with 0.4.1 looked like this:

cert_string = "".join(cert_string.strip().split("\n")[1:-1])
der = a2b_base64(cert_string)
cert = DerSequence()
cert.decode(der)
tbsCertificate = DerSequence()
tbsCertificate.decode(cert[0])
subjectPublicKeyInfo = tbsCertificate[6]
pub_key = RSA.importKey(subjectPublicKeyInfo)
jwt.decode(token_string, pub_key)

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

You need to pass the public key instead of the full certificate to the decode method. So extract the key from the certificate in order to use it as in:

from cryptography.x509 import load_pem_x509_certificate
from cryptography.hazmat.backends import default_backend

cert_str = "-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----MIIDETCCAfm..."
cert_obj = load_pem_x509_certificate(cert_str, default_backend())
public_key = cert_obj.public_key()

and then:

token_string = "eyJhbGciOiJSUzI1NiIsImtpZCI6I..."
jwt.decode(token_string, public_key, algorithms=['RS256'])

Answer 2

If the key file is generated using ssh-keygen -t rsa (RFC4716), you can use the file directly.

Encode:

import jwt

pemfile = open("id_rsa", 'r')
keystring = pemfile.read()
pemfile.close()
token = jwt.encode(payload, keystring, algorithm='RS256')

Decode:

import jwt

pemfile = open("id_rsa.pub", 'r')
keystring = pemfile.read()
pemfile.close()
payload = jwt.decode(toekn, keystring,  verify=True)

dont forget to catch errors like jwt.ExpiredSignatureError etc