JWT Json Web Token Audience aud versus Client Id - What s the difference

Question

I m working on implementing OAuth 2 0 JWT access token in my authentication server  But  I m not clear on what the differences are between the JWT aud claim and the client id HTTP header value  Are they the same  If not  can you explain the difference between the two   My suspicion is that aud should refer to the resource server s   and the client id should refer to one of the client applications recognized by the authentication server  i e  web app  or iOS app      In my current case  my resource server is also my web app client

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Though this is old  I think question is valid even today     My suspicion is that aud should refer to the resource server s   and   the client id should refer to one of the client applications   recognized by the authentication server   Yes  aud should refer to token consuming party  And client id refers to token obtaining party       In my current case  my resource server is also my web app client    In the OP s scenario  web app and resource server both belongs to same party  So this means client and audience to be same  But there can be situations where this is not the case    Think about a SPA which consume an OAuth protected resource  In this scenario SPA is the client  Protected resource is the audience of access token   This second scenario is interesting  There is a working draft in place named  Resource Indicators for OAuth 2 0  which explain where you can define the intended audience in your authorisation request  So the resulting token will restricted to the specified audience  Also  Azure OIDC use a similar approach where it allows resource registration and allow auth request to contain resource parameter to define access token intended audience  Such mechanisms allow OAuth adpotations to have a separation between client and token consuming  audience  party

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If you came here searching OpenID Connect  OIDC   OAuth 2 0    OIDC I recognize that this is tagged for oauth 2 0 and NOT OIDC  however there is frequently a conflation between the 2 standards since both standards can use JWTs and the aud claim  And one  OIDC  is basically an extension of the other  OAUTH 2 0    I stumbled across this question looking for OIDC myself   OAuth 2 0 Access Tokens   For OAuth 2 0 Access tokens  existing answers pretty well cover it  Additionally here is one relevant section from OAuth 2 0 Framework  RFC 6749   For public clients using implicit flows  this specification does not provide any method for the client to determine what client an access token was issued to      Authenticating resource owners to clients is out of scope for this specification   Any specification that uses the authorization process as a form of delegated end-user authentication to the client  e g   third-party sign-in service  MUST NOT use the implicit flow without additional security mechanisms that would enable the client to determine if the access token was issued for its use  e g   audience- restricting the access token    OIDC ID Tokens   OIDC has ID Tokens in addition to Access tokens  The OIDC spec is explicit on the use of the aud claim in ID Tokens   openid-connect-core-1 0   aud  REQUIRED  Audience s  that this ID Token is intended for  It MUST contain the OAuth 2 0 client id of the Relying Party as an audience value  It MAY also contain identifiers for other audiences  In the general case  the aud value is an array of case sensitive strings  In the common special case when there is one audience  the aud value MAY be a single case sensitive string   furthermore OIDC specifies the azp claim that is used in conjunction with aud when aud has more than one value   azp OPTIONAL  Authorized party - the party to which the ID Token was issued  If present  it MUST contain the OAuth 2 0 Client ID of this party  This Claim is only needed when the ID Token has a single audience value and that audience is different than the authorized party  It MAY be included even when the authorized party is the same as the sole audience  The azp value is a case sensitive string containing a StringOrURI value

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The JWT aud  Audience  Claim According to RFC 7519   The  quot aud quot   audience  claim identifies the recipients that the JWT is intended for   Each principal intended to process the JWT MUST identify itself with a value in the audience claim   If the principal processing the claim does not identify itself with a value in the  quot aud quot  claim when this claim is present  then the JWT MUST be rejected   In the general case  the  quot aud quot  value is an array of case- sensitive strings  each containing a StringOrURI value   In the special case when the JWT has one audience  the  quot aud quot  value MAY be a single case-sensitive string containing a StringOrURI value   The interpretation of audience values is generally application specific  Use of this claim is OPTIONAL   The Audience  aud  claim as defined by the spec is generic  and is application specific  The intended use is to identify intended recipients of the token  What a recipient means is application specific  An audience value is either a list of strings  or it can be a single string if there is only one aud claim  The creator of the token does not enforce that aud is validated correctly  the responsibility is the recipient s to determine whether the token should be used  Whatever the value is  when a recipient is validating the JWT and it wishes to validate that the token was intended to be used for its purposes  it MUST determine what value in aud identifies itself  and the token should only validate if the recipient s declared ID is present in the aud claim  It does not matter if this is a URL or some other application specific string  For example  if my system decides to identify itself in aud with the string  api3 app com  then it should only accept the JWT if the aud claim contains api3 app com in its list of audience values  Of course  recipients may choose to disregard aud  so this is only useful if a recipient would like positive validation that the token was created for it specifically  My interpretation based on the specification is that the aud claim is useful to create purpose-built JWTs that are only valid for certain purposes  For one system  this may mean you would like a token to be valid for some features but not for others  You could issue tokens that are restricted to only a certain  quot audience quot   while still using the same keys and validation algorithm  Since in the typical case a JWT is generated by a trusted service  and used by other trusted systems  systems which do not want to use invalid tokens   these systems simply need to coordinate the values they will be using  Of course  aud is completely optional and can be ignored if your use case doesn t warrant it  If you don t want to restrict tokens to being used by specific audiences  or none of your systems actually will validate the aud token  then it is useless  Example  Access vs  Refresh Tokens One contrived  yet simple  example I can think of is perhaps we want to use JWTs for access and refresh tokens without having to implement separate encryption keys and algorithms  but simply want to ensure that access tokens will not validate as refresh tokens  or vice-versa  By using aud  we can specify a claim of refresh for refresh tokens and a claim of access for access tokens upon creating these tokens  When a request is made to get a new access token from a refresh token  we need to validate that the refresh token was a genuine refresh token  The aud validation as described above will tell us whether the token was actually a valid refresh token by looking specifically for a claim of refresh in aud  OAuth Client ID vs  JWT aud Claim The OAuth Client ID is completely unrelated  and has no direct correlation to JWT aud claims  From the perspective of OAuth  the tokens are opaque objects  The application which accepts these tokens is responsible for parsing and validating the meaning of these tokens  I don t see much value in specifying OAuth Client ID within a JWT aud claim

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As it turns out  my suspicions were right  The audience aud claim in a JWT is meant to refer to the Resource Servers that should accept the token     As this post simply puts it      The audience of a token is the intended recipient of the token       The audience value is a string -- typically  the base address of the   resource being accessed  such as https   contoso com    The client id in OAuth refers to the client application that will be requesting resources from the Resource Server     The Client app  e g  your iOS app  will request a JWT from your Authentication Server   In doing so  it passes it s client id and client secret along with any user credentials that may be required  The Authorization Server validates the client using the client id and client secret and returns a JWT     The JWT will contain an aud claim that specifies which Resource Servers the JWT is valid for   If the aud contains www myfunwebapp com  but the client app tries to use the JWT on www supersecretwebapp com  then access will be denied because that Resource Server will see that the JWT was not meant for it

[oauth] JWT (Json Web Token) Audience "aud" versus Client_Id - What's the difference?

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