Chapter 4. Red Hat Single Sign-On Continuous Delivery 7.3.CD04

The Signature SPI makes it possible to plug-in additional signature algorithms. This enables additional signatures and also enables changing how signatures are generated. For example, using this allows using an HSM device to sign tokens.

Thanks to tnorimat for contributing a signficant part of this work.

Alongside the Signature SPI there is now also support for additional signature algorithms.

Keycloak now has support for RS256, RS384, RS512, ES256, ES384, ES512, HS256, HS384 and HS512.

Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ES256/384/512) are very interesting as they provide similar security properties as RSA signatures, but use significantly less CPU.

HMAC (HS256/384/512) are also very useful when you do not want your application to verify the signature itself. Since these are symmetric signatures only Keycloak is able to verify the signature, which requires the application to use the token introspection endpoint to verify tokens.

Thanks to tnorimat for contributing a signficant part of this work.

It is now possible to specify the audiences in the tokens issued for OpenID Connect clients. There is also support for verification of audience on the adapter side.

Having authorization services support in Node.js makes it very easy to do fine-grained central authorization with the Node.js adapter.