Microsoft.IdentityModel: Key not valid for use in specified state

cryptography wif
Brice Williams picture Brice Williams · Nov 22, 2011 · Viewed 44.1k times · Source

I have a claims aware web application using Windows Identity Foundation that has been working well, except on one server. I am seeing the error message shown below in the event log.

Exception information: 
    Exception type: CryptographicException 
    Exception message: Key not valid for use in specified state.

   at System.Security.Cryptography.ProtectedData.Unprotect(Byte[] encryptedData, Byte[] optionalEntropy, DataProtectionScope scope)
   at Microsoft.IdentityModel.Web.ProtectedDataCookieTransform.Decode(Byte[] encoded)

This application is using a very standard implemenation of WIF with ADFS v2. It is not using RsaEncryptionCookieTransform. I am looking for any suggestions on how to diagnose this. Things I have tried so far:

  1. The Application Pool is using the ASP.NET v4.0 identity which has the "Load User Profile" setting set to true.
  2. I deleted the C:\Users\ASP.NET v4.0\AppData folder and saw this was successfully recreated.
  3. I checked permissions on certificate private keys, which were good. I also tried disabling token encryption which did not make any difference.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Answer

Garrett Vlieger picture Garrett Vlieger · Nov 22, 2011

This is usually caused by the application not being able to decrypt the authentication token cookie. Make sure that the identity that owns the App Pool has sufficient permission to access your certificate store. Try changing the Identity to NetworkService and see if that helps.

You should also clear your browser's cookies to make sure you don't have cookies from a different application cached.

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