WCF over HTTPS using SSL WildCard Certificate

Question

We are developers of an interactive browser management tool. Our main software is currently hosted and available to our customers via the Internet, each client has its own primary software instance and subdomain. For example, customerA.ourdomain.com directs the service to client A, which runs on a virtual server. customerB.ourdomain.com directs another service to the same or different virtual server and vice versa.

Now we are switching to the Windows Phone and Store applications. Currently, we have developed a WCF service and a WP application. The WCF service works side by side with our core software on one of our virtual servers and is available as a test subdomain. We have successfully secured the connection between the application and the service using a 90-day trail certificate. This certificate contains the full name of the subdomain.

Now we would like to protect our WCF service with a WildCard certificate, so each client and / or subdomain will be closed, and we do not need to purchase a certificate for each client.

Is this possible with WCF? Is this done before? CN name will be * .ourdomain.com. Clients will connect with their phones to their own service by entering their own subdomain name. In other words: a WP application should be able to connect to the WCF service running on customerA.ourdomain.com or customerB.ourdomain.com using the same certificate.

Many thanks!

Answer 1

Is this possible with WCF? Is this done before?

Yes, we have successfully used the substitution certificate from DigiCert for several years

They provide a utility to ensure that the certificate is installed correctly.

In terms of WCF configuration, this is similar to what you would already have

<serviceCredentials> <serviceCertificate x509FindType="FindBySubjectName" findValue="*.ourdomain.com" storeLocation="LocalMachine" storeName="My"/> </serviceCredentials> 

In the corresponding note, you can create your own substitution certificate (for testing purposes), which works by filling out the SubjectAltNames field