Java implementation of PASETO: Platform-Agnostic Security Tokens

Implementation of PASETO library written in Java. This library is focused on taking part of the encryption/decryption part of the tokens it has a little dependencies as possible. How you construct the tokens with which JSON library is up to you. According to the specification the payload should always be a JSON object.

Contents

• What is Paseto?
  • Key Differences between Paseto and JWT
• Installation

What is Paseto?

Paseto is everything you love about JOSE (JWT, JWE, JWS) without any of the many design deficits that plague the JOSE standards. Paseto (Platform-Agnostic SEcurity TOkens) is a specification and reference implementation for secure stateless tokens.

Key Differences between Paseto and JWT

Unlike JSON Web Tokens (JWT), which gives developers more than enough rope with which to hang themselves, Paseto only allows secure operations. JWT gives you "algorithm agility", Paseto gives you "versioned protocols". It's incredibly unlikely that you'll be able to use Paseto in an insecure way.

Caution: Neither JWT nor Paseto were designed for stateless session management. Paseto is suitable for tamper-proof cookies, but cannot prevent replay attacks by itself

Installation

There are four version available in Maven Central.

Version 4

Add the following dependency to your project:

<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/io.github.nbaars/paseto4j-version4 -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>io.github.nbaars</groupId>
    <artifactId>paseto4j-version4</artifactId>
    <version>${paseto4j.version}</version>
</dependency>

Version 3

Version 3 is composed of NIST-approved algorithms, and will operate on tokens with the v3 version header.

Add the following dependency to your project:

<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/io.github.nbaars/paseto4j-version3 -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>io.github.nbaars</groupId>
    <artifactId>paseto4j-version3</artifactId>
    <version>${paseto4j.version}</version>
</dependency>

Version 2

Version 2 (the recommended version by the specification) is supported, this version depends on Libsodium see here on how to install this library. The Dockerfile contains an example how to install it on a Linux based system.

Add the following dependency to your project:

<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/io.github.nbaars/paseto4j-version2 -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>io.github.nbaars</groupId>
    <artifactId>paseto4j-version2</artifactId>
    <version>${paseto4j.version}</version>
</dependency>

Version 1

Add the following dependency to your project:

<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/io.github.nbaars/paseto4j-version1 -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>io.github.nbaars</groupId>
    <artifactId>paseto4j-version1</artifactId>
    <version>${paseto4j.version}</version>
</dependency>

Usage

For usage see the examples project which shows how to use Paseto4j in action.

Differences with other Java Paseto implementations

Why use this library over the other Java implementations?

• No dependency on any JSON library. It is a lightweight library supporting the basic Paseto operations. The rest is up-to-you.
• Easy to use API.
• Available on Maven Central

Example usages

• https://nutbutterfly.medium.com/spring-boot-quick-guide-to-replace-jwt-with-paseto-774f43c8f2c4 - This library provide a simple API, easy to use and fully flexible for developer.

Development

paseto-version2 needs Libsodium to be present, to avoid installing it on your local machine, you can use the following command to build it locally:

docker build -t paseto4j .
docker run -v "${HOME}"/.m2:/root/.m2 -v "${PWD}":/workspace paseto4j ./mvnw verify     

The first command is only necessary ones, for building the Maven image.

Release

We use Calendar Versioning as version numbers. Creating a new tag and pushing it to GitHub will start the release process.