Migrate a ASP.NET web service from http to https. How to create a SSL certificate that works in test environment on IIS 7.5?

Question

I have a question regarding a web service, http and https. First of all, there is a quite similar question with an accepted answer on StackOverflow. Like the questioner on SO, I have a simple working http:// web service. Now, my company wants to go to https:// for security reasons.

The accepted answer on SO states that

"You will need to change the config file in any client applications that consume your service to the new URL.

Your web service application should not require any changes. IIS will handle the transport encryption with the SSL certificate."

I am very new to SSL (and https) an want to verify this in my isolated test environment (Windows Server 2008 R2 + IIS 7.5 + WLAN) before I deploy anything to production. My server application is a ASP.NET web service, my consumers are both Android and iOS clients.I need to create a "valid" test certificate that works with both server and clients.

I have tried to "Create Self-Signed Certificate" in IIS and bind it to the current site but I have not got it to work. How can I create a "valid" test certificate for my isolated experimental environment?

Answer 1

When I do testing with security certificates, I often use the real certificate on the test machine. I configure the test machine with the real host name. Then I use my /etc/hosts (or hosts.txt) file to point the real domain name to the test box for testing a client.

Doing this bypasses the need for generating certificates and making sure that all test clients can accept self-signed certificates.