Can a windows hosted WCF service use HTTPS?

Question

I have a WCF service that is using webHttpBinding on an endpoint, and the WCF service is hosted as a windows service. Is it possible to secure this at the transport level by using HTTPS or some other method?

Answer 1

I have not tried to do this with a Windows Service, but here is how I have successfully secured a WCF service using IIS and shared certificates. The biggest difference is that instead of being in the registry as a windows service it's a .svc file hosted up by ASP.net and your service implementation must have the AspNetCompatibilityEnabled attribute flagged to TRUE

• Server Config
• Client Config

see also:

• stack overflow article
• msdn article
• wcf security patterns

Answer 2

Yes - you can use HTTPS or even an SSH tunnel if you wanted to.

Here is the MSDN page that explains how to configure WCF for HTTPS.