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Webhook Verification

Webhooks sent by Northpass can be verified by calculating a digital signature.

 

Each Webhook request includes a X-Northpass-Hmac-SHA256 header which is generated using your school’s shared secret, along with the data sent in the request.

 

To verify that the request came from Northpass, compute the HMAC digest according to the following algorithm and compare it to the value in the X-Northpass-Hmac-SHA256 header. If they match, you can be sure that the Webhook was sent from Northpass and the data has not been compromised.

 

Note: if you are using a Rack based framework such as Ruby on Rails or Sinatra, the header you are looking for is HTTP_X_Northpass_Hmac_SHA256

 

Below is a simple example in Ruby using the Sinatra web framework of how one might verify a webhook request:

 

require 'rubygems'
require 'base64'
require 'openssl'
require 'sinatra'

# The SchoolKeep app's shared secret, viewable from the Webhooks app
SHARED_SECRET = 'my_shared_secret'

helpers do
  # Compare the computed HMAC digest based on the shared secret and the request contents
  # to the reported HMAC in the headers
  def verify_webhook(data, hmac_header)
    digest  = OpenSSL::Digest::Digest.new('sha256')
    calculated_hmac = Base64.encode64(OpenSSL::HMAC.digest(digest, SHARED_SECRET, data)).strip
    calculated_hmac == hmac_header
  end
end

# Respond to HTTP POST requests sent to this web service
post '/' do  request.body.rewind
  data = request.body.read
  verified = verify_webhook(data,
env["HTTP_X_Northpass_Hmac_SHA256"])
  # Output 'true' or 'false'  

puts "Webhook verified: #{verified}"
end

 

Questions? Contact us a Support@Northpass.com and we'll be happy to assist!