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="1A2A598B00088B359208265CFF45D16F8223BA56449DB00D6C85B978AF85EB387F1BEDC7014530A93BF54E279C493FE8C0FD86C3CCF5C7F368A7128F8FE52C82" decryptionKey="3FE3699C95CC2E3D15A98D92A249BC2EA1EAD65160FF9071" validation="SHA1" />
ASP.NET 2.0 machineKey
<machineKey validationKey="5F584C425570B9F6CA1D8E8A552B2F8716B22676389AF4BD58C5299441D4EA5DA5C0D720553108758C1F9E93CE8CF2A454ED284C5A82FF2A4DBC81396A383FD6" decryptionKey="DBB5BF47AA9C910F6B2AB9C279A7CE589EA92B14F259B80E91ABC4D54521764E" 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(); }