.well-known/openid-configuration for system_accesstoken

[sachip-msft]

Is there any documentation on how agent variable $(system.accessToken) value can be validated in custom API? the JWT contains x5t header however with no location of issuer signing keys, it cant be validated.
The token contains values like this but where can we get issuer signing keys in this case? the issuer is app.vstoken.visualstudio.com
Does anyone know what is endpoint for openid configuration for this endpoint?
should have something like /.well-known/openid-configuration

[gerritlansing]

Would also love to be pointed to the openid-config so that we can validate these tokens externally.

[flyingUnderTheRadar]

Were either of you folks able to get the endpoint that can be used to get the certs to validate the signature?

[gerritlansing]

@flyingUnderTheRadar Confirmed with MSFT there’s presently no public endpoint. Explained my use case to the product manager and hoping to see this at some point.

[flyingUnderTheRadar]

Thanks for letting me know. I guess the only other slightly undesirable (dependency on an unnecessary endpoint) way is to send this token back to Az Devops in an API call and let them do the heavy lifting to make sure it is a valid token.

[gerritlansing]

@flyingUnderTheRadar I just had an idea occur and I tested it out. Microsoft recently released service connection federated authn support for Azure Resource Manager, which uses an app reg federation rather than client secret. I built a quick pipeline to see if I could nab that token and validate it externally.

I configured a service connection to use Workload Federation to an App Reg in Azure AD with no real permissions (could probably lock it down further to prevent a stolen token from being used in Azure AD).

Sample Pipeline

trigger: none

pool:
  vmImage: ubuntu-latest

steps:
- task: AzureCLI@2
  inputs:
    azureSubscription: '<ServiceConnectionName>'
    scriptType: 'pscore'
    scriptLocation: 'inlineScript'
    inlineScript: |
      echo $env:idToken > $(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)/token.txt
    addSpnToEnvironment: true

- task: PublishPipelineArtifact@1
  inputs:
    targetPath: '$(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)'
    artifact: 'token'
    publishLocation: 'pipeline'

Example Token Payload

{
  "jti": "<guid>",
  "sub": "sc://<DevopsOrgName>/<ProjectName>/<ServiceConnectionName>",
  "aud": "api://AzureADTokenExchange",
  "iss": "https://vstoken.dev.azure.com/<GUID>",
  "nbf": 1708639268,
  "exp": 1708640467,
  "iat": 1708639868
}

Accessing https://vstoken.dev.azure.com/<GUID>/.well-known/openid-configuration provides the jkws_url linking to the public keys, which permit verification of the signature.

It's not pretty, but I think it be secure and as long as the app reg in Azure AD is configured to to only allow federation from Azure DevOps, has no Azure AD permissions, and the service connection is tightly controlled.

[flyingUnderTheRadar]

I can't use this for my use case but yes this is a good workaround!