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HttpSig library

This library consists of Scala and Scala-JS components implementing the IETF's HTTP-Bis HTTP Message Signatures.

See also the web service written in Python at httpsig.org

What is Http Message Signatures?

The first version of this spec appeared as draftcavage-http-signatures in 2013. After which followed 12 more versions. The IETF HTTP Bis WG then took that work over improving it a lot.

Http Signatures can be used by clients and by servers, to sign messages. This can be used in authentication protocols such as the in development Solid HttpSig.

Where is it used?

Older versions of the spec have been used by Amazon Web Services and Mastodon, among others.

Content of this repository

This repository contains the following projects:

  • rfc8941: a pure scala implementation of RFC 8941: Structured Field Values needed by "Signing HTTP Messages" that compiles to Java and JavaScript. This is a core component needed for "Signing Http Messages"
  • ietfSig: the main implementation in Scala compiling to JVM and JS, with an abstraction of HTTP so as to reduce duplication of code for the various frameworks such as Akka or HttpSig
  • ietfSigTests: a project with tests that are then run by each of the implementations in their tests.
  • akka: Implementation of "Signing HTTP Messages" for the akka-http Actor Framework of of Signing HTTP Messages
  • http4s implementation of the cats based http4s

Usage

The architecture of the third version of this library was worked out n the ietfSig README.md.

Note: currently we only have implemented request signing and verification. That is most of the work needed for response verification, so it should not take much time to get done.

Look at examples in the test suite.

  • VerifyBaseOnRequests.scala shows how a client can build the base for all the examples in the spec using typesafe functions.
  • VerifySignatureTests.scala shows how a server would verify the signatures in a request, given a DB of keyId to key material db.
  • todo, verify the client correctly signs example messages
  • todo, implement the same for response signing: this should be easier because most of the tools for request signing can be re-used

Another place to look is for applications using the library. See for example:

(There may be a lag between the time this library is released and the time they use the latest version)

JavaScript Testing

httpSig compiles to Java and JavaScript. Testing in JS environments is done using Selenium. This requires having a selenium driver. On MacOs this is installed (see Stack Overflow) using brew install selenium-server. But one still requires Chrome and Firefox drivers to be installed after that.

Inside of sbt one can then run tests for Firefox only with

> set Global / useJSEnv := JSEnv.Firefox
> test

Inside of sbt one can then run tests for Chrome only with

> set Global / useJSEnv := JSEnv.Chrome
> test

NodeJS is the default, but that won't run any tests in this case as we have not implemented encryption for NodeJS in bobcats yet.

Released Artifacts

Artifacts are released in the Sonatype net.bblfish.crypto snapshot repository.

TODO

  • make it Java friendly (see how akka achieves that)
  • make it JS friendly (client and server)

Thanks

This work was made possible by the generous EU grant from nlnet for the Solid Control Project and for Solid Wallet That last will go through 2023.

If you wish to have the library run on a specific client or server environment, please contact [email protected] or leave issues in the Issue database.