IETF logoI’ve made a minor release of the JSON WEB {Signature,Encryption,Key,Algorithms,Token} (JWS, JWE, JWK, JWA, JWT) working group specifications and the JWS and JWE JSON Serialization (JWS-JS, JWE-JS) individual submission specifications in preparation for IETF 84 in Vancouver, BC. These versions incorporate feedback from working group members since the major release on July 6th, and update the lists of open issues in preparation for discussions in Vancouver (and on the working group mailing lists).

One significant addition is that the JWT and JWE-JS specs both now contain complete, testable examples with encrypted results. No normative changes were made.

The working group specifications are available at:

The individual submission specifications are available at:

The document history entries (also in the specifications) are as follows:

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-jose-json-web-signature-04

  • Completed JSON Security Considerations section, including considerations about rejecting input with duplicate member names.
  • Completed security considerations on the use of a SHA-1 hash when computing x5t (x.509 certificate thumbprint) values.
  • Refer to the registries as the primary sources of defined values and then secondarily reference the sections defining the initial contents of the registries.
  • Normatively reference XML DSIG 2.0 [W3C.CR xmldsig core2 20120124] for its security considerations.
  • Added this language to Registration Templates: “This name is case sensitive. Names that match other registered names in a case insensitive manner SHOULD NOT be accepted.”
  • Reference draft-jones-jose-jws-json-serialization instead of draft-jones-json-web-signature-json-serialization.
  • Described additional open issues.
  • Applied editorial suggestions.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-jose-json-web-encryption-04

  • Refer to the registries as the primary sources of defined values and then secondarily reference the sections defining the initial contents of the registries.
  • Normatively reference XML Encryption 1.1 [W3C.CR xmlenc core1 20120313] for its security considerations.
  • Reference draft-jones-jose-jwe-json-serialization instead of draft-jones-json-web-encryption-json-serialization.
  • Described additional open issues.
  • Applied editorial suggestions.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-jose-json-web-key-04

  • Refer to the registries as the primary sources of defined values and then secondarily reference the sections defining the initial contents of the registries.
  • Normatively reference XML DSIG 2.0 [W3C.CR xmldsig core2 20120124] for its security considerations.
  • Added this language to Registration Templates: “This name is case sensitive. Names that match other registered names in a case insensitive manner SHOULD NOT be accepted.”
  • Described additional open issues.
  • Applied editorial suggestions.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-jose-json-web-algorithms-04

  • Added text requiring that any leading zero bytes be retained in base64url encoded key value representations for fixed-length values.
  • Added this language to Registration Templates: “This name is case sensitive. Names that match other registered names in a case insensitive manner SHOULD NOT be accepted.”
  • Described additional open issues.
  • Applied editorial suggestions.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-oauth-json-web-token-02

  • Added an example of an encrypted JWT.
  • Added this language to Registration Templates: “This name is case sensitive. Names that match other registered names in a case insensitive manner SHOULD NOT be accepted.”
  • Applied editorial suggestions.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-jones-jose-jws-json-serialization-01

  • Generalized language to refer to Message Authentication Codes (MACs) rather than Hash-based Message Authentication Codes (HMACs).

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-jones-jose-jwe-json-serialization-01

  • Added a complete JWE-JS example.
  • Generalized language to refer to Message Authentication Codes (MACs) rather than Hash-based Message Authentication Codes (HMACs).

HTML-formatted versions are available at: