Which type of key .NET assemblies uses for signing and how to create it?

Question

I have read many MSDN articles about assembly signing and I haven't found nothing about creating the key, just about creating the file, but the 3 methods listed to create a file needs a pre-generated key. Can you provide me a link to a tutorial to this?

Answer 1

Here's how you create a new Public/Private key pair. You can do the same thing from within the VS UI - see Signing tab in Project Properties.

Answer 2

As Anton suggests, you can generate one easily using sn.exe. The problem with this is that it's no good for verifiying your identity as a publisher because there is no trust chain established for self-generated keys. If you want to sign your assemblies so that your identity can be verified then you'll need to get a certificate from a trusted supplier, such as Verisign.

Answer 3

You can use the Sn.exe provide by microsoft to generate à Key pair.

After that you ll have to do:

[assembly: AssemblyKeyFileAttribute(@"..\..\key.snk")]

Hope this could help :)