I’m having problems with the AntiForgeryToken in ASP.Net MVC. If I do an iisreset on my web server and a user continues with their session they get bounced to a login page. Not terrible but then the AntiForgery token blows up and the only way to get going again is to blow away the cookie on the browser.

With the beta version of version 1 it used to go wrong when reading the cookie back in for me so I used to scrub it before asking for a validation token but that was fixed when it was released.

For now I think I’ll roll back to my code that fixed the beta problem but I can’t help but think I’m missing something. Is there a simpler solution, heck should I just drop their helper and create a new one from scratch? I get the feeling that a lot of the problem is the fact that it’s tied so deeply into the old ASP.Net pipeline and is trying to kludge it into doing something it wasn’t really designed to do.

I had a look in the source code for the ASP.Net MVC 2 RC and it doesn't look like the code has changed much so while I haven't tried it, I don't think there are any answers there.

Here is the relevant part of the stack trace of the exception.

Edit: I just realised I didn't mention that this is just trying to insert the token on the GET request. This isn't the validation that occurs when you do a POST kicking off.

System.Web.Mvc.HttpAntiForgeryException: A required anti-forgery token was not supplied or was invalid. ---> System.Web.HttpException: Validation of viewstate MAC failed. If this application is hosted by a Web Farm or cluster, ensure that <machineKey> configuration specifies the same validationKey and validation algorithm. AutoGenerate cannot be used in a cluster. ---> System.Web.UI.ViewStateException: Invalid viewstate. 
    Client IP: 127.0.0.1
    Port: 4991
    User-Agent: scrubbed
    ViewState: scrubbed
    Referer: blah
    Path: /oursite/Account/Login ---> System.Security.Cryptography.CryptographicException: Padding is invalid and cannot be removed.
   at System.Security.Cryptography.RijndaelManagedTransform.DecryptData(Byte[] inputBuffer, Int32 inputOffset, Int32 inputCount, Byte[]& outputBuffer, Int32 outputOffset, PaddingMode paddingMode, Boolean fLast)
   at System.Security.Cryptography.RijndaelManagedTransform.TransformFinalBlock(Byte[] inputBuffer, Int32 inputOffset, Int32 inputCount)
   at System.Security.Cryptography.CryptoStream.FlushFinalBlock()
   at System.Web.Configuration.MachineKeySection.EncryptOrDecryptData(Boolean fEncrypt, Byte[] buf, Byte[] modifier, Int32 start, Int32 length, IVType ivType, Boolean useValidationSymAlgo)
   at System.Web.UI.ObjectStateFormatter.Deserialize(String inputString)
   --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
   --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
   at System.Web.UI.ViewStateException.ThrowError(Exception inner, String persistedState, String errorPageMessage, Boolean macValidationError)
   at System.Web.UI.ViewStateException.ThrowMacValidationError(Exception inner, String persistedState)
   at System.Web.UI.ObjectStateFormatter.Deserialize(String inputString)
   at System.Web.UI.ObjectStateFormatter.System.Web.UI.IStateFormatter.Deserialize(String serializedState)
   at System.Web.Mvc.AntiForgeryDataSerializer.Deserialize(String serializedToken)
   --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
   at System.Web.Mvc.AntiForgeryDataSerializer.Deserialize(String serializedToken)
   at System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper.GetAntiForgeryTokenAndSetCookie(String salt, String domain, String path)
   at System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper.AntiForgeryToken(String salt, String domain, String path)