Install SSL Cert for single application?

Question

I'm creating a Windows Forms application that uses an embedded WebBrowser control to view an intranet web page. The page is provided via https, using a self-signed certificate. I want the certificate to be valid in the context of my application, but don't want to mess with the client's machine itself (by permanently installing a trusted certificate).

Is there any way to programmatically trust a certificate for the lifetime of an application, rather than for the system as a whole?

Answer 1

You can certainly do that. But you may need to do it in two steps. Make a https request first and get the Server certificate and create a truststore on the fly and import the certificate into the truststore. This would be a onetime activity. You may cache this truststore to the filesystem so that you need not do this everytime. Make another https request and use this truststore for validating the subsequent https requests that you will make.