CODEWITHSUNDEEP
oauth-2.0jwt
vinod827
vinod827

Reputation: 1544

How JWT is different from OAuth 2.0?

I have done a sample application using Sprint Boot, Spring security and JWT and define my custom authentication & authorization filters. While performing basic authentication (passing username & password) I get JWT token in the format of xxxx.yyyy.zzzz where xxxx is header, yyyy is payload and zzzz is signature and each part is encoded using Base64URL encoder. What I do not understand is how JWT is different from OAuth 2.0. In OAuth 2.0, we can pass 2 types of grant_types as either 'username' or 'client credentials' & also needs to pass client id, secret id to get access & refresh tokens.

Please assist to clarify my following doubts:- 1) Is JWT lighter than OAuth 2.0 as it does not contain the refresh token but just access token? 2) Is JWT cannot be used to make a standalone authorization server like we can make a standalone authorization server using @EnableAuthorizationServer annotation when it comes to OAuth 2.0. Is my assumption correct? 3) JWT does not accept client id/secret client but just used as basic authentication to get bearer tokens? 4) Is the format of access token (or bearer) for both OAuth2.0 and JWT are different?

I have seen an example where both OAuth 2.0 and JWT were used. OAuth 2.0 was to make authorization server which returns JWT token only in the end but did not understand why JWT was used if OAuth2.0 can return a token by itself.

Thank you

Upvotes: -1

Views: 6825

Answers (1)

jbspeakr
jbspeakr

Reputation: 496

JWT is a JSON-based token defined in RFC 7519. OAuth 2.0 is an authorization framework defined in RFC 6749. Comparing both is like asking "How Glucose is different from Apple Pie?".

However, it is possible to bring OAuth 2.0 and JWTs together as is defined in RFC 7523 – The JSON Web Token (JWT) Profile for OAuth 2.0 Client Authentication and Authorization Grants. It standardizes, how to use JWTs as bearer tokens within the OAuth 2.0 framework, which enables what I call stateless authentication.

Regarding your questions:

  1. Whether or not you use JWTs as bearer tokens does not influence whether or not you want to hand out refresh tokens.
  2. Not sure whether I get your questions. However, using JWT allows you to do decentral, stateless auth decisions as there is no necessity to store token state centrally. However, nobody prevents you from having a standalone authorization server.
  3. How you want to do authentication has nothing to do with JWT. It is still OAuth 2.0.
  4. In OAuth 2.0 bearer tokens are considered to be opaque tokens – the format does not matter. If you use JWTs as bearer tokens, you need to follow the corresponding RFC.

Upvotes: 2

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