How to replace machinekey for asp.net core?

Question

My task is simple - exchange files between servers in the farm

I know that the old way to use a machine key does not work in the asp.net core, but there is a DataProtection API

However, I cannot store keys in a shared folder (this is the default behavior of DataProtection)

Is there a way to store key exchange data in configurations? (as in old asp.net)

Answer 1

you can store keys in a file system folder, but, of course, there are security problems, but the problems are similar to those stored in the web.config file.

Another thing is that there are more than one key with the machine key, the keys in the api data protection expire after a certain period, and if necessary, new keys are automatically created. If you encrypt something using the data protection api and save it, for example, in a database, you may need to decrypt it later using expired keys

This example stores the keys in a folder named dp_keys in the main folder of the web application.

string pathToCryptoKeys = Path.Combine(environment.ContentRootPath, "dp_keys"); services.AddDataProtection() .PersistKeysToFileSystem(new System.IO.DirectoryInfo(pathToCryptoKeys)); 

Please note that storing keys in the file system is not recommended. In docs there is a powershell script that allows you to store keys in the application pool in the registry. Azure has an Azure Key storage for storing data protection keys.