SECURITY: make EPT routing independent of signature well-formedness
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looks_like_ept used jwt.get_unverified_header, which validates the WHOLE token
and therefore rejects anything with a malformed signature segment. Routing
consequently depended on signature well-formedness: an EPT-shaped token with a
bad signature fell through to the HUMAN path, where it was refused for the wrong
reason and — with require_verified_jwt off (dev) — could have been read as a
human identity via its `sub` claim.

Now the header segment is decoded directly, so routing depends only on what the
token CLAIMS to be; whether it is authentic remains verify_ept's job.

Also routes alg:none to the EPT verifier regardless of typ, since a `none`
token is never valid for any caller. Both forged shapes now return 401
ept_invalid — the honest code — instead of 503 "feature not ready".

Found by noticing a forged EPT returned 503 where the verifier should have
answered 401, rather than accepting "it was refused, close enough".

80 tests green.

Co-Authored-By: Claude (Fable 5) <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Grant Whitmer
2026-08-13 23:23:50 -04:00
parent 830ca48705
commit a0ed4a5ec0
3 changed files with 47 additions and 4 deletions

View File

@@ -24,6 +24,8 @@ this module returns only identity and the caller re-checks standing.
from __future__ import annotations
import base64
import json
import logging
import time
from dataclasses import dataclass
@@ -110,16 +112,31 @@ def verify_ept(token: str, eternitas_base_url: str) -> VerifiedEpt:
def looks_like_ept(token: str) -> bool:
"""Cheap, unauthenticated triage: is this token even claiming to be an EPT?
"""Cheap, unauthenticated triage: is this token even *claiming* to be an EPT?
Used ONLY to route a token to the right verifier. It decides nothing about
trust — an attacker controls every byte it reads.
Decodes the header segment directly rather than via
`jwt.get_unverified_header`, which validates the whole token structure and
therefore rejects anything with a malformed SIGNATURE. That made routing
depend on signature well-formedness: an EPT-shaped token with a bad
signature fell through to the human path, where it was refused for the wrong
reason ("signing in isn't switched on") and — with `require_verified_jwt`
off — could have been read as a human identity via its `sub` claim.
Routing must depend only on what the token claims to be. Whether it is
authentic is `verify_ept`'s job, and it says no.
"""
try:
header = jwt.get_unverified_header(token)
head_b64 = token.split(".", 1)[0]
head_b64 += "=" * (-len(head_b64) % 4)
header = json.loads(base64.urlsafe_b64decode(head_b64))
except Exception: # noqa: BLE001
return False
return header.get("typ") == "EPT" or header.get("alg") == "ES256"
if not isinstance(header, dict):
return False
return header.get("typ") == "EPT" or header.get("alg") in ("ES256", "none")
async def eternitas_reachable(base_url: str) -> bool: