php-jwt VS paseto

So basically if the login is successfull I have to create a JWT token (with something like this library) with the userID inside and send it via `setcookie()` for web or in a JSON response to the API client and consider it the long lived refresh token.

This depends on the library you end up downloading for the platform of your choosing. Some of the parts I explained above will be handled by the library for example in my case I decoded signedTransactionInfo using firebase/php-jwt. This has the added benefit of always checking the validity of the signature which was omitted in the manual method.

https://github.com/firebase/php-jwt i use this one, its really good

> Why all the hate for JWTs?

> Just pick a crypto scheme and the JWT is just an encoding that makes it easier to use.

That's not what JWT is, but I can understand why someone would be misled into believing that.

JWT isn't just an encoding format, it also includes a crypto algorithm negotiation protocol that lets the attacker choose the algorithm. Even if you strictly allow-list which algorithm you want to support, you can accidentally bypass this control in many libraries if you suppor the `kid` (key ID) header. [1]

It also allows attackers to completely strip the security. [2] [3]

Put shortly, JWT is a gun aimed directly at your foot. That's why there's so much hate for JWTs.

[1] https://github.com/firebase/php-jwt/issues/351

[2] https://paragonie.com/blog/2017/03/jwt-json-web-tokens-is-ba...

[3] https://www.howmanydayssinceajwtalgnonevuln.com/

Might I suggest Paseto (https://paseto.io/) - it solves a lot of the headaches of JWT. Signing and encryption are two different things that require two different sets of keys, so you can't mess it up.

(Full disclosure, I've written one implementation: https://github.com/auth70/paseto-ts)

Though we'll be building a session-based authentication system, it's noteworthy that with the introduction of some concepts which will be discussed in due time, you can turn it into JWT- or, more securely and appropriately, PASETO-based authentication system.

Time we ditch it and use paseto

The PASETO web site goes over it. Mostly it's designed to make you do things the right way and avoid all the security holes you can fall into with JWT.

If this is too much to handle, you shouldn't have to! There's already solutions that handle it for you