Skip to content

Update README to include HMAC key length recommendations #477

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Merged
merged 1 commit into from
Feb 24, 2021
Merged

Update README to include HMAC key length recommendations #477

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
1 commit
Select commit
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
4 changes: 4 additions & 0 deletions README.md
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -73,6 +73,10 @@ Algorithm algorithmRS = Algorithm.RSA256(publicKey, privateKey);

> Note: How you obtain or read keys is not in the scope of this library. For an example of how you might implement this, see [this gist](https://gist.github.com/lbalmaceda/9a0c7890c2965826c04119dcfb1a5469).

##### HMAC Key Length and Security

When using a Hash-based Message Authenticaton Code, e.g. HS256 or HS512, in order to comply with the strict requirements of the JSON Web Algorithms (JWA) specification (RFC7518), you **must** use a secret key which has the same (or larger) bit length as the size of the output hash. This is to avoid weakening the security strength of the authentication code (see NIST recomendations NIST SP 800-117). For example, when using HMAC256, the secret key length must be a minimum of 256 bits.

#### Using a KeyProvider:

By using a `KeyProvider` you can change in runtime the key used either to verify the token signature or to sign a new token for RSA or ECDSA algorithms. This is achieved by implementing either `RSAKeyProvider` or `ECDSAKeyProvider` methods:
Expand Down