https certificate issue

Question

Hello everyone,

I need to use some certificate on IIS 7.0 web server to test my https code at client side (console application). I have created self-signed certificate and it is fine. Now I want to test with formal certificate which IE could recognize, like certificates from verisign or other formal certificate issuing companies.

Any easy way to get some free and formal certificate? I only need to test for a few days.

I am developing using VSTS 2008 + C# + .Net 3.5 + IIS 7.0.

Here is what verisign returns when I create a free trial certificate, I am not sure what is wrong?

Error 950e - Invalid Common Name Error The common name in the CSR contains invalid characters like '?', '*', ':', ' '.  

If you continue to receive this error or have further questions, you may write to [email protected] for assistance. Please include the following information in your correspondence:


Product or service you are enrolling for
Your server software vendor (for server certificates)
Common Name of your certificate (for example, www.verisign.com)
URL where you are experiencing this error message.

thanks in advance, George

Answer 1

Any easy way to get some free and formal certificate?

While some root CAs might be cheaper I don't think any are free.

If you want free you could set up your own CA (Windows Server has one) and add its self signed certificate to you trusted roots in your Windows user profile (which IE uses). Firefox (and I assume other) browsers have their own certificate stores and need to have the root CA installed.

Answer 2

try adding your self signed certificate to you trusted roots, that should be accepted. i don't know about silverlight, but it worked fine for a .net web service client i did the other day.