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Spring Security 6 & JWT Authentication · Lesson

Rotating Signing Keys and Key Management

Learn why and how to rotate JWT signing keys safely, using key IDs (kid), JWK sets, and overlapping validity to avoid downtime.

Why Rotate Keys?

A signing key is the secret that proves a JWT is genuine. If it leaks, an attacker can forge tokens. Key rotation replaces keys periodically so a compromised key has a limited lifetime.

The Rotation Challenge

You cannot simply swap the key: tokens signed with the old key are still valid until they expire. The server must accept the old and new keys at the same time during a transition window.

All lessons in this course

  1. Implementing Refresh Tokens
  2. JWT Token Revocation Strategies
  3. Secure Token Storage Practices
  4. Rotating Signing Keys and Key Management
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