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The remote certificate is invalid according to the validation procedure

When calling an OData service from inside my ASP.NET MVC application, the call always fails with the following exception:

The remote certificate is invalid according to the validation procedure

The OData service I’m connecting to is available through HTTPS so I would guess that something is wrong with the SSL certificate.

Let’s walk through the checklist:

  • Hostname matches the name used in the certificate: OK
  • Certificate is not expired: OK
  • Encryption level is high enough: OK
  • The full certificate chain is trusted: OK

Mmm, strange. Everything seemed fine. And when I browsed to the OData service directly from the browser, I could get all the data as I would expect.

In the end I figured out that I had to give the MVC application access to the private key of the certificate.

Following steps fixed the problem:

  1. Export the certificate from the OData Service host(don’t forget to export the private key as well).
  2. Open MMC and load the Certificates snap-in.
  3. Import the certificate into the "Local Computer" account on the server where the ASP.NET MVC application is hosted.  Make sure to check "Allow private key to be exported"
  4. Give your IIS 7.5 Application Pool's identity Full Trust access to the certificate.
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