HTTPS Certificate Not Found

Version: Any

Issue:

After configuration the certificate for your PowerShell Universal and attempting to start the server, you receive the following error. 

Unhandled exception. System.InvalidOperationException: The requested certificate CN=xxxxxxxx.dddd.ch could not be found in LocalMachine/My with AllowInvalid setting: False.

at Microsoft.AspNetCore.Server.Kestrel.Https.CertificateLoader.LoadFromStoreCert(String subject, String storeName, StoreLocation storeLocation, Boolean allowInvalid)

at Microsoft.AspNetCore.Server.Kestrel.KestrelConfigurationLoader.LoadFromStoreCert(CertificateConfig certInfo)

at Microsoft.AspNetCore.Server.Kestrel.KestrelConfigurationLoader.LoadCertificate(CertificateConfig certInfo, String endpointName)

at Microsoft.AspNetCore.Server.Kestrel.KestrelConfigurationLoader.Load()

at Microsoft.AspNetCore.Server.Kestrel.Core.KestrelServer.ValidateOptions()

at Microsoft.AspNetCore.Server.Kestrel.Core.KestrelServer.StartAsync[TContext](IHttpApplication`1 application, CancellationToken cancellationToken)

at Microsoft.AspNetCore.Hosting.GenericWebHostService.StartAsync(CancellationToken cancellationToken)

at Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting.Internal.Host.StartAsync(CancellationToken cancellationToken)

at Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting.HostingAbstractionsHostExtensions.RunAsync(IHost host, CancellationToken token)

at Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting.HostingAbstractionsHostExtensions.RunAsync(IHost host, CancellationToken token)

at Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting.HostingAbstractionsHostExtensions.Run(IHost host)

at Universal.Server.Program.Main(String[] args) in D:\a\universal\universal\src\Universal.Server\Program.cs:line 31

The certificate is correctly returned by PowerShell.

Get-ChildItem Cert:\LocalMachine\My

Root Cause:

The root cause of the issue is that the ASP.NET Core certificate location code is different than PowerShell. 

Workaround:

When specifying the certificate, do not use the fully qualified subject name. Rather, use the portion after CN=. For example, if PowerShell shows the subject name of my certificate as CN=localhost, then I would enter localhost in to appsettings.json. 

We have created a PowerShell script you can use to determine whether your certificate can be found by the web host. Enter your subject name in the variable below and run the script. 

$allowInvalid = $true

$subject = 'localhost'

$store = [System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Store]::new('My', 'LocalMachine')

$store.Open('ReadOnly')

$storeCertificates = $store.Certificates;

$foundCertificates = $storeCertificates.Find('FindBySubjectName', $Subject, $allowInvalid);

function Test-IsCertificateAllowedForServerAuth

{

    param($Cert)

    $ServerAuthenticationOid = "1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3.1";

    $result = $false 

    foreach($cert in $foundCertificates)

    {

        if ($cert.Extensions)

        {

            foreach($extension in $cert.Extensions  | Where-Object { $_ -is [System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509EnhancedKeyUsageExtension] })

            {

                $result = $true

                foreach ($oid in $extension.EnhancedKeyUsages)

                {

                    if ($oid.Value -eq $ServerAuthenticationOid)

                    {

                        return $true;

                    }

                }

            }

        }

    }

    -not $result

}

$foundCertificates | Where-Object { (Test-IsCertificateAllowedForServerAuth $_) -and $_.HasPrivateKey  }

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