Ending user sessions with token revocation

You can revoke a refresh token for a user using the user pools API or the authorization server Revoke endpoint. When you revoke a refresh token, all access tokens that were previously issued by that refresh token become invalid. The other refresh tokens issued to the user are not affected.

Note

JWT tokens are self-contained with a signature and expiration time that was assigned when the token was created. Revoked tokens can't be used with any Amazon Cognito API calls that require a token. However, revoked tokens will still be valid if they are verified using any JWT library that verifies the signature and expiration of the token.

You can revoke a refresh token for a user pool client with token revocation enabled. When you create a new user pool client, token revocation is enabled by default.

Enable token revocation

Before you can revoke a token for an existing user pool client, you must enable token revocation. You can enable token revocation for existing user pool clients using the AWS CLI or the AWS API. To do this, call the aws cognito-idp describe-user-pool-client CLI command or the DescribeUserPoolClient API operation to retrieve the current settings from your app client. Then call the aws cognito-idp update-user-pool-client CLI command or the UpdateUserPoolClient API operation. Include the current settings from your app client and set the EnableTokenRevocation parameter to true.

When you create a new user pool client using the AWS Management Console, the AWS CLI, or the AWS API, token revocation is enabled by default.

After you enable token revocation, new claims are added in the Amazon Cognito JSON Web Tokens. The origin_jti and jti claims are added to access and ID tokens. These claims increase the size of the application client access and ID tokens.

To create or modify an app client with token revocation enabled, include the following parameter in your CreateUserPoolClient or UpdateUserPoolClient API request.

"EnableTokenRevocation": true

Revoke a token

You can revoke a refresh token using a RevokeToken API request, for example with the aws cognito-idp revoke-token CLI command. You can also revoke tokens using the Revoke endpoint. This endpoint is available after you add a domain to your user pool. You can use the revocation endpoint on either an Amazon Cognito hosted domain or your own custom domain.

Note

Your request to revoke a refresh token must include the client ID that was used to obtain the token.

The following is the body of an example RevokeToken API request.

{
   "ClientId": "1example23456789",
   "ClientSecret": "abcdef123456789ghijklexample",
   "Token": "eyJjdHkiOiJKV1QiEXAMPLE"
}

The following is an example cURL request to the /oauth2/revoke endpoint of a user pool with a custom domain.

curl --location 'auth.mydomain.com/oauth2/revoke' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded' \
--header 'Authorization: Basic Base64Encode(client_id:client_secret)' \
--data-urlencode 'token=abcdef123456789ghijklexample' \
--data-urlencode 'client_id=1example23456789'

The RevokeToken operation and the /oauth2/revoke endpoint require no additional authorization unless your app client has a client secret.