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="1CD94EC5F82CB8AE0D9EEABE88A7E9BFCE6E0D32805E27702C6FB32587FCAC980F63FBF3A2D9E8B3250A4E26517E7D51F434183688189A18529D1D9AF66498F8"
 decryptionKey="561A195D8F955AB97F57430DB685DB1028C038D3821ADAD6"
 validation="SHA1" />

ASP.NET 2.0 machineKey

<machineKey validationKey="43EA2741FF8586A0514703146D2138187052FF2C1F2266D1869CD045AE41B327EE5A231BBEBB1ED368967CF2F3D9A27C3A402AEF53E7A52A835C8A4D543CAFE3"
 decryptionKey="B20444E00B121400133C877D502787E33BCF82D73FCDD52E19485B3EB275E294"
 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();
}