Mitigate Replay Attacks When Using the Implicit Flow

To mitigate replay attacks when using the Implicit Flow with Form Post, a nonce must be sent on authentication requests as required by the OpenID Connect (OIDC) specification.

The nonce is generated by the application, sent as a nonce query string parameter in the authentication request, and included in the ID Token response from Auth0. This allows applications to correlate the ID Token response from Auth0 with the initial authentication request.

To learn more about where to include the nonce, see Add Login Using the Implicit Flow with Form Post.

One way to generate a cryptographically random nonce is to use a tool like Nano ID or similar. This does require you to bundle the tool with your JavaScript code, however. If that's not possible, you can take advantage of the fact that modern browsers can use the Web Crypto API to generate cryptographically secure random strings for use as nonces.

function randomString(length) {
    var charset = '0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz+/'
    result = ''

    while (length > 0) {
        var bytes = new Uint8Array(16);
        var random = window.crypto.getRandomValues(bytes);

        random.forEach(function(c) {
            if (length == 0) {
                return;
            }
            if (c < charset.length) {
                result += charset[c];
                length--;
            }
        });
    }
    return result;
}

The generated nonce must be persisted in your web application using any of the following methods:

• HttpOnly session cookie

• HTML5 local storage value

For example:

window.localStorage.setItem('nonce', randomString(16));

Once Auth0 responds with an ID Token, this token must be validated and decoded as usual. Its nonce claim must contain the exact same value that was sent in the request. If not, authentication should be rejected by the application.

var jwt = '...'; // validated and decoded ID Token body
if (jwt.nonce === window.localStorage.getItem('nonce')) {
    // Nonce is OK
} else {
    // Nonce is not OK! Token replay attack might be underway
}

• Implicit Flow with Form Post
• Add Login Using the Implicit Flow with Form Post
• Implicit Flow with OIDC