This module maintains an RSA key pair that can serve as a foundation of authentication when communicating with Jenkins.
Each Jenkins instance maintains an RSA private/public key pair that can be used to uniquely identify Jenkins. This information is called "instance identity".
From outside, the public key can be obtained by sending the GET request to the top page of Jenkins, and look for the X-Instance-Identity header in the response. This header is always available, even if the response is 401 access denied (which can happen if Jenkins is protected via security.) The value represents a base64-encoded ASN.1 DER serialization of X.509 SubjectPublicKeyInfo record.
Plugins that run inside Jenkins can access this key pair programmatically through
the org.jenkinsci.main.modules.instance_identity.InstanceIdentity class
(add a provided scope dependency to this module into your plugin).
- Sometimes, a Jenkins server is accessible through multiple URLs. This ID can be used to identify duplicates in those.
- Plugins can use the private key to produce a digital signature of some data that can be verified later by other parties about its origin.
See Changelog