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="D77FF72DA1C7DA0F40B408F5136E76E0A7B2EA912620BA32FDD821278FC33F487DACBBA650BC96D479F7AB72B9BA32E89825EA6714A182C2AAB4D4A98FA28114" decryptionKey="745E4E331B709C831B68B991C6697742A30B43432E9BE589" validation="SHA1" />
ASP.NET 2.0 machineKey
<machineKey validationKey="18F390699BCA45B798BFCF849C60A169940153ADF59807CD4DFCC112FB399714E0399A3B1478C00E16D3BEED30480C3DC9AEA83555490BA67675DA330E366699" decryptionKey="7C5949EC7E4DEC4904F43228246F3936E12F3791BEB8FEE5F38D8E15D2C382B5" 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(); }