Allowing Untrusted SSL Certificates with HttpClien

Question

I'm struggling to get my Windows 8 application to communicate with my test web API over SSL.

It seems that HttpClient/HttpClientHandler does not provide and option to ignore untrusted certificates like WebRequest enables you to (albeit in a "hacky" way with ServerCertificateValidationCallback).

Any help would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

I found an example in this Kubernetes client where they were using X509VerificationFlags.AllowUnknownCertificateAuthority to trust self-signed self-signed root certificates. I slightly reworked their example to work with our own PEM encoded root certificates. Hopefully this helps someone.

namespace Utils
{
  using System;
  using System.Collections.Generic;
  using System.Linq;
  using System.Net.Security;
  using System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates;

  /// <summary>
  /// Verifies that specific self signed root certificates are trusted.
  /// </summary>
  public class HttpClientHandler : System.Net.Http.HttpClientHandler
  {
    /// <summary>
    /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="HttpClientHandler"/> class.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="pemRootCerts">The PEM encoded root certificates to trust.</param>
    public HttpClientHandler(IEnumerable<string> pemRootCerts)
    {
      foreach (var pemRootCert in pemRootCerts)
      {
        var text = pemRootCert.Trim();
        text = text.Replace("-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----", string.Empty);
        text = text.Replace("-----END CERTIFICATE-----", string.Empty);
        this.rootCerts.Add(new X509Certificate2(Convert.FromBase64String(text)));
      }

      this.ServerCertificateCustomValidationCallback = this.VerifyServerCertificate;
    }

    private bool VerifyServerCertificate(
      object sender,
      X509Certificate certificate,
      X509Chain chain,
      SslPolicyErrors sslPolicyErrors)
    {
      // If the certificate is a valid, signed certificate, return true.
      if (sslPolicyErrors == SslPolicyErrors.None)
      {
        return true;
      }

      // If there are errors in the certificate chain, look at each error to determine the cause.
      if ((sslPolicyErrors & SslPolicyErrors.RemoteCertificateChainErrors) != 0)
      {
        chain.ChainPolicy.RevocationMode = X509RevocationMode.NoCheck;

        // add all your extra certificate chain
        foreach (var rootCert in this.rootCerts)
        {
          chain.ChainPolicy.ExtraStore.Add(rootCert);
        }

        chain.ChainPolicy.VerificationFlags = X509VerificationFlags.AllowUnknownCertificateAuthority;
        var isValid = chain.Build((X509Certificate2)certificate);

        var rootCertActual = chain.ChainElements[chain.ChainElements.Count - 1].Certificate;
        var rootCertExpected = this.rootCerts[this.rootCerts.Count - 1];
        isValid = isValid && rootCertActual.RawData.SequenceEqual(rootCertExpected.RawData);

        return isValid;
      }

      // In all other cases, return false.
      return false;
    }

    private readonly IList<X509Certificate2> rootCerts = new List<X509Certificate2>();
  }
}

Answer 2

Have a look at the WebRequestHandler Class and its ServerCertificateValidationCallback Property:

using (var handler = new WebRequestHandler())
{
    handler.ServerCertificateValidationCallback = ...

    using (var client = new HttpClient(handler))
    {
        ...
    }
}

Answer 3

If you're attempting to do this in a .NET Standard library, here's a simple solution, with all of the risks of just returning true in your handler. I leave safety up to you.

var handler = new HttpClientHandler();
handler.ClientCertificateOptions = ClientCertificateOption.Manual;
handler.ServerCertificateCustomValidationCallback = 
    (httpRequestMessage, cert, cetChain, policyErrors) =>
{
    return true;
};

var client = new HttpClient(handler);

Answer 4

I found an example online which seems to work well:

First you create a new ICertificatePolicy

using System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates;
using System.Net;

public class MyPolicy : ICertificatePolicy
{
  public bool CheckValidationResult(ServicePoint srvPoint, X509Certificate certificate, WebRequest request, 
int certificateProblem)
  {
    //Return True to force the certificate to be accepted.
    return true;
  }
}

Then just use this prior to sending your http request like so:

System.Net.ServicePointManager.CertificatePolicy = new MyPolicy();

http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2008/05/05/send-a-https-post-request-with-c/

Answer 5

Or you can use for the HttpClient in the Windows.Web.Http namespace:

var filter = new HttpBaseProtocolFilter();
#if DEBUG
    filter.IgnorableServerCertificateErrors.Add(ChainValidationResult.Expired);
    filter.IgnorableServerCertificateErrors.Add(ChainValidationResult.Untrusted);
    filter.IgnorableServerCertificateErrors.Add(ChainValidationResult.InvalidName);
#endif
using (var httpClient = new HttpClient(filter)) {
    ...
}

Answer 6

I don't have an answer, but I do have an alternative.

If you use Fiddler2 to monitor traffic AND enable HTTPS Decryption, your development environment will not complain. This will not work on WinRT devices, such as Microsoft Surface, because you cannot install standard apps on them. But your development Win8 computer will be fine.

To enable HTTPS encryption in Fiddler2, go to Tools > Fiddler Options > HTTPS (Tab) > Check "Decrypt HTTPS Traffic".

I'm going to keep my eye on this thread hoping for someone to have an elegant solution.