webhook-verifier

webhook-verifier

You are the single source of truth for "how a webhook is verified for provider X on stack Y". When generating webhook code, integration-specialist reads this skill and the per-provider details in [signatures.md](./signatures.md), and produces a handler that:

1. Captures the raw request body (NOT parsed).
2. Verifies the cryptographic signature using the provider's canonical method.
3. Applies replay protection (timestamp window OR event-id dedup, per providers.json).
4. Routes the verified event to the appropriate handler.
5. Returns the correct HTTP status code (200 OK for valid events; 400 for bad signature; 401 for replay).
6. Caps the body at 256 KB before reading.
7. Logs only event.id, event.type, event.created — never the full payload.

The verification contract

A correct webhook handler has this shape (language-neutral):

1. Read Content-Length header → if > 256 KB, return 413.
2. Read raw body (bytes, NOT parsed JSON).
3. Read signature header (provider-specific).
4. Verify signature → if invalid, return 400 with no leak about why.
5. Parse JSON from raw body now that signature is verified.
6. Apply replay protection:
   a. If signature includes timestamp: check `event_timestamp` within tolerance.
   b. Otherwise: check event.id against webhook_events_processed table.
7. If duplicate (already processed): return 200 OK (idempotent), do nothing.
8. Dispatch to handler by event.type.
9. Mark event as processed.
10. Return 200 OK.

Raw-body capture per stack (Rule 5)

Next.js App Router — the most common mistake:

// app/api/webhook/<provider>/route.ts
export const runtime = 'nodejs'; // NOT 'edge'

export async function POST(request: Request) {
  const rawBody = await request.text(); // raw string
  const signature = request.headers.get('<signature-header>');
  // pass rawBody (string) to provider's verifier
}

Next.js Pages Router:

// pages/api/webhook/<provider>.ts
export const config = { api: { bodyParser: false } };

import { buffer } from 'micro';

export default async function handler(req, res) {
  const rawBody = await buffer(req); // Buffer
  // pass rawBody.toString() to verifier
}

Express:

// Critical: register raw BEFORE express.json() globally
app.post('/api/webhook/<provider>',
  express.raw({ type: 'application/json', limit: '256kb' }),
  async (req, res) => {
    const rawBody = req.body; // Buffer because of express.raw
    const signature = req.headers['<signature-header>'];
    // ...
  }
);

FastAPI:

from fastapi import Request, HTTPException

@app.post("/api/webhook/<provider>")
async def webhook(request: Request):
    if int(request.headers.get("content-length", 0)) > 262_144:
        raise HTTPException(413)
    raw_body = await request.body() # bytes; never .json() before verify
    signature = request.headers.get("<signature-header>")
    # ...

Laravel:

$rawBody = $request->getContent(); // string
$signature = $request->header('<signature-header>');

Rails:

raw_body = request.raw_post
signature = request.headers['<signature-header>']

Per-provider details

See [signatures.md](./signatures.md) for the full table:

• Signature header name
• Algorithm (HMAC-SHA256, HMAC-SHA256-with-timestamp, SHA-256-checksum)
• Timestamp tolerance in seconds
• Replay mitigation strategy (timestamp-window | event-id-dedup | both)
• Required events minimum (the switch router must handle these or log them as TODO)
• Canonical code snippet calling the provider's verifier

Error handling

| Situation | Response | Why | |---|---|---| | Signature invalid | 400 Bad Request, body: empty or { "error": "invalid_signature" } | Don't leak why it failed; force attacker to guess. | | Body > 256 KB | 413 Payload Too Large | DoS guard. | | Replay (old timestamp) | 400 Bad Request | Same as bad signature from the attacker's POV. | | Duplicate event.id | 200 OK, no-op | Idempotency: provider may legitimately retry. | | Handler threw an exception | 500 Internal Server Error | Provider will retry; check webhook_events_processed to dedup the retry. | | Event type not handled | 200 OK, log TODO | Avoid being unsubscribed for non-200 responses. |

The // @pagokit:signature-verified tag

The webhook-has-signature.js validator detects standard calls (stripe.webhooks.constructEvent, Wompi.verifyEventChecksum, etc.). If you generate code that wraps verification in a helper from lib/auth/, place this tag on the handler function so the validator knows it's covered:

// @pagokit:signature-verified -- uses lib/auth/verifyStripeWebhook
export async function POST(request: Request) { … }

Bypassing the rule entirely (rare) uses the different // pagokit-ignore: syntax — see SECURITY_RULES.md Rule 3.

Anti-patterns (refuse to generate code that does any of these)

• ❌ await request.json() before signature verification — breaks the HMAC.
• ❌ Trusting event.type from the parsed JSON before verifying.
• ❌ Storing webhook secrets in process.env without checking .env is gitignored.
• ❌ Returning a non-2xx response to all unhandled events — most providers disable the endpoint after consecutive failures.
• ❌ Logging the full event body to console / Sentry.
• ❌ Verifying with STRIPE_SECRET_KEY (the API key) instead of STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET (a different secret with whsec_ prefix).