Application token

Cloudflare Access includes the application token with all authenticated requests to your origin. A typical JWT looks like this:

eyJhbGciOiJSUzI1NiIsImtpZCI6IjkzMzhhYmUxYmFmMmZlNDkyZjY0.eyJhdWQiOlsiOTdlMmFhZ TEyMDEyMWY5MDJkZjhiYzk5ZmMzNDU5MTNh.zLYsHmLEginAQUXdygQo08gLTExWNXsN4jBc6PKdB

As shown above, the JWT contains three Base64-URL values separated by dots:

Header
Payload
Signature

Unless your application is connected to Access through Cloudflare Tunnel, your application must validate the token to ensure the security of your origin. Validation of the header alone is not sufficient — the JWT and signature must be confirmed to avoid identity spoofing.

{
  "alg": "RS256",
  "kid": "9338abe1baf2fe492f646a736f25afbf7b025e35c627be4f60c414d4c73069b8",
  "typ": "JWT"
}

alg identifies the encoding algorithm.
kid identifies the key used to sign the token.
typ designates the token format.

Payload

The payload contains the actual claim and user information to pass to the application. Payload contents vary depending on whether you authenticated to the application with an identity provider or with a service token.

Identity-based authentication

{
  "aud": ["32eafc7626e974616deaf0dc3ce63d7bcbed58a2731e84d06bc3cdf1b53c4228"],
  "email": "user@example.com",
  "exp": 1659474457,
  "iat": 1659474397,
  "nbf": 1659474397,
  "iss": "https://yourteam.cloudflareaccess.com",
  "type": "app",
  "identity_nonce": "6ei69kawdKzMIAPF",
  "sub": "7335d417-61da-459d-899c-0a01c76a2f94",
  "country": "US"
}

Field	Description
aud	Application audience (AUD) tag of the Access application.
email	The email address of the authenticated user, verified by the identity provider.
exp	The expiration timestamp for the token (Unix time).
iat	The issuance timestamp for the token (Unix time).
nbf	The not-before timestamp for the token (Unix time), used to check if the token was received before it should be used.
iss	The Cloudflare Access domain URL for the application.
type	The type of Access token (`app` for application token or `org` for global session token).
identity_nonce	A cache key used to get the user's identity.
sub	The ID of the user. This value is unique to an email address per account. The user would get a different `sub` if they are removed and re-added to your Zero Trust organization, or if they log into a different organization.
country	The country where the user authenticated from.

Custom SAML attributes and OIDC claims

Access allows you to add custom SAML attributes and OIDC claims to your JWT for enhanced verification, if supported by your identity provider. This is configured when you setup your SAML or OIDC provider.

User identity

User identity is useful for checking application permissions. For example, your application can validate that a given user is a member of an Okta or Microsoft Entra ID group such as Finance-Team.

Due to cookie size limits and bandwidth considerations, the application token only contains a subset of the user's identity. To get the user's full identity, send the CF_Authorization cookie to https://<your-team-name>.cloudflareaccess.com/cdn-cgi/access/get-identity. Your request should be structured as follows:

curl -H 'cookie: CF_Authorization=<user-token>' https://<your-team-name>.cloudflareaccess.com/cdn-cgi/access/get-identity

Access will return a JSON structure containing the following data:

Field	Description
email	The email address of the user.
idp	Data from your identity provider.
geo	The country where the user authenticated from.
user_uuid	The ID of the user.
devicePosture	The device posture attributes.
account_id	The account ID for your organization.
iat	The timestamp indicating when the user logged in.
ip	The IP address of the user.
auth_status	The status if authenticating with mTLS.
common_name	The common name on the mTLS client certificate.
service_token_id	The Client ID of the service token used for authentication.
service_token_status	True if authentication was through a service token instead of an IdP.
is_warp	True if the user enabled WARP.
is_gateway	True if the user enabled WARP and authenticated to a Zero Trust team.
gateway_account_id	An ID generated by the WARP client when authenticated to a Zero Trust team.
device_id	The ID of the device used for authentication.
version	The version of the `get-identity` object.
device_sessions	A list of all sessions initiated by the user.

Service token authentication

{
  "type": "app",
  "aud": ["32eafc7626e974616deaf0dc3ce63d7bcbed58a2731e84d06bc3cdf1b53c4228"],
  "exp": 1659474457,
  "iss": "https://yourteam.cloudflareaccess.com",
  "common_name": "e367826f93b8d71185e03fe518aff3b4.access",
  "iat": 1659474397,
  "sub": ""
}

Field	Description
type	The type of Access token (`app` for application token or `org` for global session token).
aud	The application audience (AUD) tag of the Access application.
exp	The expiration timestamp of the JWT (Unix time).
iss	The Cloudflare Access domain URL for the application.
common_name	The Client ID of the service token (`CF-Access-Client-Id`).
iat	The issuance timestamp of the JWT (Unix time).
sub	Contains an empty string when authentication was through a service token.

Signature

Cloudflare generates the signature by signing the encoded header and payload using the SHA-256 algorithm (RS256). In RS256, a private key signs the JWTs and a separate public key verifies the signature.

For more information on JWTs, refer to jwt.io ↗.

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