This is an application that will generate a valid machineKey block with random, secure, hard-coded keys that you can paste inside the <system.web> in your web.config or machine.config file.
Hard-coded encryption and validation keys are needed if you have a web farm/web garden, if you use passwordFormat=Encrypted with ASP.NET 2.0’s Membership provider, or if you have certain ViewState issues. I discuss those reasons more in-depth in my blog posts about “Invalid Viewstate” errors and the ASP.NET Membership Encrypted passwordFormat, or you can also read my machineKey CodeProject article for more background information.
Below is a random set of keys, generated by this page. Go ahead and refresh this page to get a new set of keys.
ASP.NET 1.1 machineKey
<machineKey validationKey="36569073E6C7C013E553FCA033F22CE7FA203922218A863FC4C362B437D2B15E0370638ACC3B184F36B5A442EEE79D2EAE468B7DD32BE712118B38522FFD6D8B" decryptionKey="4F106E8D3E8E456F59165068A9A2D658787035F38C3DC92A" validation="SHA1" />
ASP.NET 2.0 machineKey
<machineKey validationKey="78F8DCFB40CB40ECFC4BA79A511D7F41E6957D7F31C8218FEE75E6C0DB22E14E0FB9D11DAC4AF98F30FF52A22F8DF344584C845925BFD7D66B9281156E3BA795" decryptionKey="B52D4E6E3F0254F0FAF36DDC2CE997E309BE3D2F16E0E5D76B5372288F93F118" validation="SHA1" decryption="AES" />
If you want, you can also use the code below so you can generate the keys yourself:
using System; using System.Text; using System.Security; using System.Security.Cryptography; private void Button1_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e) { txtASPNET20.Text = getASPNET20machinekey(); txtASPNET11.Text = getASPNET11machinekey(); } public string getASPNET20machinekey() { StringBuilder aspnet20machinekey = new StringBuilder(); string key64byte = getRandomKey(64); string key32byte = getRandomKey(32); aspnet20machinekey.Append("\n"); return aspnet20machinekey.ToString(); } public string getASPNET11machinekey() { StringBuilder aspnet11machinekey = new StringBuilder(); string key64byte = getRandomKey(64); string key24byte = getRandomKey(24); aspnet11machinekey.Append(" \n"); return aspnet11machinekey.ToString(); } public string getRandomKey(int bytelength) { int len = bytelength * 2; byte[] buff = new byte[len / 2]; RNGCryptoServiceProvider rng = new RNGCryptoServiceProvider(); rng.GetBytes(buff); StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(len); for (int i = 0; i < buff.Length; i++) sb.Append(string.Format("{0:X2}", buff[i])); return sb.ToString(); }