Machine Key Generator

• Download Machine Key Generator

Introduction

The <machineKey> Element configures keys to use for encryption and decryption of forms authentication cookie data and viewstate data, and for verification of out-of-process session state identification. This section can be declared at the machine, site, and application levels, but not at the subdirectory level. Using this pattern allows your application to save your authentication ticket, in away that you can travel around different websites that have the same machine key using this ticket.

Machine Key

Machine key comes in the following format:

<system.web>

<machineKey 

validationKey='9E7338046712DC5407684161A2B7F67AE74FF304B005B4B32587BB6BAF89C1FB99E886D5637A771912362466ED9DD4FA9C9BCEBB682918E2536542DD85427FD9'   

decryptionKey='EF975B401B6327D5D773435F2F0172B81CD19C7EB515FA58'   

validation='SHA1'/>

system.web>

The Code

// This line defines an object from RNGCryptoServiceProvider calss that generates a random number
// using the implementation provided by the crytographic service provider
// static RNGCryptoServiceProvider randomCryptoString = new RNGCryptoServiceProvider();

And to generate some random data using RNG (Random Number Generator)

//
// 64 bytes validation key is max size supported by ASP.NET
// 24 bytes decryption key is max size supported by ASP.NET
//
static byte[] GetRandomCryptoData(int keySize)
{
    byte[] randomData = new byte[keySize];
    randomCryptoString.GetBytes(randomData);
    return randomData;
}

Finally, we need to convert random generated data into hexadecimal:

static string ConvertKeyToHexadecimal(byte[] key)
{
    StringBuilder hexaString = new StringBuilder(); for (int i = 0; i < key.Length; ++i)
{
    hexaString.Append(String.Format("{0:X2}", key[i]));
}
    return hexaString.ToString();
}

License

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