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="80CA41F809A488B1378BAED0021ECCDF77A2D356C0D3B525E48175B02C14608F42802D9214388CD4077B4FF6AB1F69B3ADDD222A223BB4D81FFD729F6B13A561" decryptionKey="95B4A5795F49447723B6D50FD39FF03F87926769DE60DFD9" validation="SHA1" />
ASP.NET 2.0 machineKey
<machineKey validationKey="84060FB3B2CB22A67FFCCACF32D662D2543E9B61A4A2455FEC4D612BF38CC9C1F835EA448ADE59D123B1FE1D79EE4163BF92653F4AEE719F36E3CB610708BC13" decryptionKey="EC3E526CDA79A3F473EBAB944A47FAAE5F7FAB766B38BD9CCA7D9A830B29FDA3" 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(); }