jwtcat is a Python script designed to detect and exploit well-known cryptographic flaws present in JSON Web Token (JWT). These vulnerabilities, if successfully exploited by an adversary could allow authentication bypass, information disclosure and could ultimately lead to the compromise of an entire information system.

More information about JWT vulnerabilities can be found at: https://auth0.com/blog/critical-vulnerabilities-in-json-web-token-libraries/

• Test against the following vulnerabilitie(s):
  • CVE-2018-1000531: JWT signature bypass due to the use of None hashing algorithm (alg=none)
• Guessing attacks against JWT private keys signed with the HS256 hashing algorithm:
  • Brute-force attacks
  • Wordlist attacks

jwtcat is written in Python 3 (and therefore requires a minimum of Python 3.6) in addition to the following libraries:

• coloredlogs: https://pypi.org/project/coloredlogs/
• PyJWT: https://pypi.org/project/PyJWT/
• tqdm: https://pypi.org/project/tqdm/

1. Clone/download the repository:

git clone https://github.com/AresS31/jwtcat
cd jwtcat

2. (Optional but recommended) Create and activate a new Python virtual environment:

   • Create the virtual environment: python -m venv env
   • Activate the newly created environment:
     • On POSIX: source ./env/bin/activate
     • On Windows: ./env/Scripts/Activate.ps1

3. Install jwtcat's dependencies:

python -m pip install -r requirements.txt

To get a list of options and switches use:

python jwtcat.py -h

To get a list of options and switches for brute force attacks:

python jwtcat.py brute-force -h

To get a list of options and switches for wordlist attacks:

python jwtcat.py wordlist -h

To test a JWT against CVE-2018-1000531 and HS256 brute-force attacks:

python jwtcat.py vulnerable -h

If you use jwtcat a lot (especially if it's used commercially), please consider donating as a lot of time and effort went into building and maintaining this project.

Press the "Sponsor" button on the top of this page to see ways of donating/sponsoring to this project.

Your feedback and contributions will be much appreciated.

• Implement additional attack vectors
• Implement support for multithreading or multiprocessing
• Implement support for the -tF, --token-file swicth
• Improve the code logic for:
  • TQDM integration with the logger
• Improve the script performances

• Added checks to see if jwt is signed with HS256
• Added checks to see if jwt is vulnerable to CVE-2018-1000531
• Added potfile options
• Added support for brute-force attacks
• Code refactoring
• Improved the standard output formatting
• Switched from python-colorlog to coloredlogs

Copyright (C) 2017 - 2020 Alexandre Teyar

See LICENSE file for details.