Thanks for the reply Orie.  I'm the primary author of JJWT:
https://github.com/jwtk/jjwt, so my question is grounded in general-purpose
library support and not protocol design/support.

If you are building a library that has to support all / older protocols...
> I recommend taking an approach that clearly distinguishes decoding from
> verifying.
>

I (very respectfully) disagree.  Even just parsing untrusted payloads
before cryptographic verification - before a library even has a chance to
evaluate name/value pairs of a fully constructed JSON Object - can expose
an application to security vulnerabilities.  Otherwise, yes, I'd agree that
once JSON is (safely) converted to Object instances, verification and
validation are separate concerns.

My question for the JOSE committee is whether payload parsing is even
allowed before signature verification.  And if it is, are there explicitly
documented caveats? (e.g. with RFC 2119 Notational Convention terminology,
SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, etc)?

Or is it more "it's not explicitly prevented, and you should avoid it if
possible, but feel free to support it if you want" ?

Thanks again!

Les
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