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="3AB5AECF60935288BF2971B6EA4204C3C5546A4ED1397EAA836A38C6CED5A56E502EFE4D4AC37556A8C719BC2BA4DC21D25D846DF0DB60B674454CE1CB1B4EAA"
 decryptionKey="E86883EAB95047291C59725DEBEDC57CA8AB244B338515E6"
 validation="SHA1" />

ASP.NET 2.0 machineKey

<machineKey validationKey="F7CFC26CDE3CD5D55546FE2A92A697D13B9D54B7E1242E29226301888996D2381A9A8A637FCA346F010037DFD8B0F4D51FCC06A221415B1597A651EFE4F8B144"
 decryptionKey="9291D212C8CEC69F94363A94617AF233CE0AF2585B72AA63A97F89FB99EAE76E"
 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();
}