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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-27T15:47:01+00:00

I am attempting to host a service that serves up basic web content (HTML,

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I am attempting to host a service that serves up basic web content (HTML, javascript, json) using a WebHttpBinding with minimal administrator involvement.

Thus far I have been successful, the only admin priviledges necessary are at install time (register the http reservation for the service account and to create the service itself). However, now I am running into issues with SSL. Ideally I would like to support a certificate outside the windows certificate store. I found this article – http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WCF/wcfcertificates.aspx – which seems to indicate you can specify the certificate on the service host, however at runtime navigating a browser to https://localhost/Dev/MyService results in a 404.

[ServiceContract]
public interface IWhoAmIService
{
    [OperationContract]
    [WebInvoke(
        Method = "GET",
        UriTemplate = "/")]
    Stream WhoAmI();
}

public class WhoAmIService : IWhoAmIService
{
    public Stream WhoAmI()
    {
        string html = "<html><head><title>Hello, world!</title></head><body><p>Hello from {0}</p></body></html>";
        html = string.Format(html, WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Name);

        WebOperationContext.Current.OutgoingResponse.ContentType = "text/html";

        return new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(html));
    }
}

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    ServiceHost host = new ServiceHost(typeof(WhoAmIService), new Uri("https://localhost:443/Dev/WhoAmI"));
    host.Credentials.ServiceCertificate.Certificate = new X509Certificate2(@"D:\dev\Server.pfx", "private");

    WebHttpBehavior behvior = new WebHttpBehavior();
    behvior.DefaultBodyStyle = WebMessageBodyStyle.Bare;
    behvior.DefaultOutgoingResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json;
    behvior.AutomaticFormatSelectionEnabled = false;

    WebHttpBinding secureBinding = new WebHttpBinding();
    secureBinding.Security.Mode = WebHttpSecurityMode.Transport;
    secureBinding.Security.Transport.ClientCredentialType = HttpClientCredentialType.None;

    ServiceEndpoint secureEndpoint = host.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(IWhoAmIService), secureBinding, "");
    secureEndpoint.Behaviors.Add(behvior);

    host.Open();
    Console.WriteLine("Press enter to exit...");
    Console.ReadLine();
    host.Close();
}

If I change my binding security to none and the base uri to start with http, it serves up okay. This post seems to indicate that an additional command needs to be executed to register a certificate with a port with netsh (http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wcf/thread/6907d765-7d4c-48e8-9e29-3ac5b4b9c405/). When I try this, it fails with some obscure error (1312).

C:\Windows\system32>netsh http add sslcert ipport=0.0.0.0:443 certhash=0b740a29f
29f2cc795bf4f8730b83f303f26a6d5 appid={00112233-4455-6677-8899-AABBCCDDEEFF}

SSL Certificate add failed, Error: 1312
A specified logon session does not exist. It may already have been terminated.

How can I host this service using HTTPS without the Windows Certificate Store?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    It is not possible. HTTPS is provided on OS level (http.sys kernel driver) – it is the same as providing HTTP reservation and OS level demands certificate in certificate store. You must use netsh to assign the certificate to selected port and allow accessing the private key.

    The article uses certificates from files because it doesn’t use HTTPS. It uses message security and message security is not possible (unless you develop your own non-interoperable) with REST services and webHttpBinding.

    The only way to make this work with HTTPS is not using built-in HTTP processing dependent on http.sys = you will either have to implement whole HTTP yourselves and prepare new HTTP channel for WCF or you will have to find such implementation.

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