How to manually decrypt an ASP.NET Core Authentication cookie?

Decrypting the Authentication Cookie without needing the keys

It’s worth noting that you don’t need to gain access to the keys to decrypt the authentication cookie. You simply need to use the right IDataProtector created with the right purpose parameter, and subpurpose parameters.

Based on the CookieAuthenticationMiddleware source code https://github.com/aspnet/Security/blob/rel/1.1.1/src/Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authentication.Cookies/CookieAuthenticationMiddleware.cs#L4 it looks like the purpose you need to pass is typeof(CookieAuthenticationMiddleware). And since they are passing additional parameters to the IDataProtector you will need to match them. So this line of code should get you an IDataProtector that can be used to decrypt the authentication cookie:

var dataProtector = provider.CreateProtector(typeof(CookieAuthenticationMiddleware).FullName, Options.AuthenticationScheme, "v2");

Note thatOptions.AuthenticationScheme is just “MyCookie” in this case since that’s what it was set to in the Configure method of the startup.cs file.

Here is an example action method for decrypting your authentication cookie two different ways:

public IActionResult DecryptCookie() {

    //Get the encrypted cookie value
    string cookieValue = HttpContext.Request.Cookies["MyCookie"];

    //Get a data protector to use with either approach
    var dataProtector = provider.CreateProtector(typeof(CookieAuthenticationMiddleware).FullName, "MyCookie", "v2");


    //Get the decrypted cookie as plain text
    UTF8Encoding specialUtf8Encoding = new UTF8Encoding(encoderShouldEmitUTF8Identifier: false, throwOnInvalidBytes: true);
    byte[] protectedBytes = Base64UrlTextEncoder.Decode(cookieValue);
    byte[] plainBytes = dataProtector.Unprotect(protectedBytes);
    string plainText = specialUtf8Encoding.GetString(plainBytes);


    //Get the decrypted cookie as a Authentication Ticket
    TicketDataFormat ticketDataFormat = new TicketDataFormat(dataProtector);
    AuthenticationTicket ticket = ticketDataFormat.Unprotect(cookieValue);

    return View();
}

This method uses an IDataProtectionProvider called provider that is constructor injected.

Decrypting the Authentication Cookie when persisting keys to a directory

If you want to share cookies between applications then you might decide to persist the data protection keys to a directory. This can be done by adding the following to the ConfigureServices method of the startup.cs file:

services.AddDataProtection().PersistKeysToFileSystem(
        new DirectoryInfo(@"C:\temp-keys\")); 

BE CAREFUL though because the keys are not encrypted so it’s up to you to protect them!!! Only persist the keys to a directory if you absolutely must, (or if you are just trying to understand how the system works). You will also need to specify a cookie DataProtectionProvider that uses those keys. This can be done with the help of the UseCookieAuthentication configuration in the Configure method of the startup.cs class like so:

app.UseCookieAuthentication(new CookieAuthenticationOptions() {
        DataProtectionProvider = DataProtectionProvider.Create(new DirectoryInfo(@"C:\temp-keys\")),
        AuthenticationScheme = "MyCookie",
        CookieName = "MyCookie",
        LoginPath = new PathString("/Home/Login"),
        AccessDeniedPath = new PathString("/Home/AccessDenied"),
        AutomaticAuthenticate = true,
        AutomaticChallenge = true
    });

With that configuration done. You can now decrypt the authentication cookie with the following code:

 public IActionResult DecryptCookie() {
        ViewData["Message"] = "This is the decrypt page";
        var user = HttpContext.User;        //User will be set to the ClaimsPrincipal

        //Get the encrypted cookie value
        string cookieValue = HttpContext.Request.Cookies["MyCookie"];


        var provider = DataProtectionProvider.Create(new DirectoryInfo(@"C:\temp-keys\"));

        //Get a data protector to use with either approach
        var dataProtector = provider.CreateProtector(typeof(CookieAuthenticationMiddleware).FullName, "MyCookie", "v2");


        //Get the decrypted cookie as plain text
        UTF8Encoding specialUtf8Encoding = new UTF8Encoding(encoderShouldEmitUTF8Identifier: false, throwOnInvalidBytes: true);
        byte[] protectedBytes = Base64UrlTextEncoder.Decode(cookieValue);
        byte[] plainBytes = dataProtector.Unprotect(protectedBytes);
        string plainText = specialUtf8Encoding.GetString(plainBytes);


        //Get teh decrypted cookies as a Authentication Ticket
        TicketDataFormat ticketDataFormat = new TicketDataFormat(dataProtector);
        AuthenticationTicket ticket = ticketDataFormat.Unprotect(cookieValue);

        return View();
    }

You can learn more about this latter scenario here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/security/data-protection/compatibility/cookie-sharing