Question

I am trying find a way to ignore the certificate check when request a Https resource, so far, I found some helpful article in internet.

But I still have some problem. Please review my code. I just don’t understand what does the code ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback mean.

When will this delegate method be called? And one more question, in which place should I write this code? Before ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback execute or before Stream stream = request.GetRequestStream()?

public HttpWebRequest GetRequest()
{
    CookieContainer cookieContainer = new CookieContainer();

    // Create a request to the server
    HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(_remoteUrl);

    #region Set request parameters

    request.Method = _context.Request.HttpMethod;
    request.UserAgent = _context.Request.UserAgent;
    request.KeepAlive = true;
    request.CookieContainer = cookieContainer;
    request.PreAuthenticate = true;
    request.AllowAutoRedirect = false;

    #endregion

    // For POST, write the post data extracted from the incoming request
    if (request.Method == "POST")
    {
        Stream clientStream = _context.Request.InputStream;
        request.ContentType = _context.Request.ContentType;
        request.ContentLength = clientStream.Length;

        ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback = delegate(
            Object obj, X509Certificate certificate, X509Chain chain, 
            SslPolicyErrors errors)
            {
                return (true);
            };

            Stream stream = request.GetRequestStream();

            ....
        }

        ....

        return request;
    }
}   

Answer 1

Since there is only one global ServicePointManager, setting ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback will yield the result that all subsequent requests will inherit this policy. Since it is a global “setting” it would be prefered to set it in the Application_Start method in Global.asax.

Setting the callback overrides the default behaviour and you can yourself create a custom validation routine.