JSON Web Encryption (JWE)

JSON Web Encryption (JWE) represents encrypted content using JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) based data structures. The JWE cryptographic mechanisms encrypt and provide integrity protection for an arbitrary sequence of octets.

Example JWEThis example encrypts the plaintext "The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination." to the recipient using RSAES OAEP for key encryption and AES GCM for content encryption.

The following example JWE Protected Header declares that:

The Content Encryption Key is encrypted to the recipient using the RSAES OAEP algorithm to produce the JWE Encrypted Key and
The Plaintext is encrypted using the AES GCM algorithm with a 256 bit key to produce the Ciphertext.



Encoding this JWE Protected Header as BASE64URL(UTF8(JWE Protected Header)) gives this value:



The remaining steps to finish creating this JWE are:

1. Generate a random Content Encryption Key (CEK).
2. Encrypt the CEK with the recipient's public key using the RSAES OAEP algorithm to produce the JWE Encrypted Key.
3. Base64url encode the JWE Encrypted Key.
4. Generate a random JWE Initialization Vector.
5. Base64url encode the JWE Initialization Vector.
6. Let the Additional Authenticated Data encryption parameter be ASCII(BASE64URL(UTF8(JWE Protected Header))).
6. Encrypt the Plaintext with AES GCM using the CEK as the encryption key, the JWE Initialization Vector, and the Additional Authenticated Data value, requesting a 128 bit Authentication Tag output.
7. Base64url encode the Ciphertext.
8. Base64url encode the Authentication Tag.
9. Assemble the final representation: The Compact Serialization of this result is the string BASE64URL(UTF8(JWE Protected Header)) || '.' || BASE64URL(JWE Encrypted Key) || '.' || BASE64URL(JWE Initialization Vector) || '.' || BASE64URL(JWE Ciphertext) || '.' || BASE64URL(JWE Authentication Tag).

The final result in this example (with line breaks for display purposes only) is: