Allowing Self-Signed Certificates on Localhost with Chrome and Firefox

[Batu69]

HTTPS for web applications is soon no longer an option, but a must-have. When you develop your application on your local machine, you may want to use a self-signet certificate. They cost you nothing and tools like Visual Studio create them on the first run in IIS Express. Everything would be great if current web browsers wouldn’t show you an error page like this one:

 

 

What can we do to use our self-signed certificate on our local machines and not compromise the security of our web browser?

(Just to be explicit: This is for development purposes only. Never to that in production!)

Easy fix for Chrome

In Chrome all you need to do is to open enter this URL chrome://flags/#allow-insecure-localhost into the address bar to find the configuration setting for allowing invalid certificates for localhost:

 

 

Click on Enable and restart Chrome. From now on invalid certificates on localhost (and just on localhost) are ignored and you can develop with your self-signed certificate.

Exceptions for Firefox

In Firefox you need to whitelist every certificate. On the error page for the invalid certificate you find a button with the label Advanced. Click it and then add an exception by clicking on the Add Exception button.

 

 

You can now once more verify if this is the certificate you want and then explicitly click on Confirm Security Exception...:

 

 

From now on your local certificate is accepted. If you no longer need this exception, you can click on the lock-icon in the address bar and remove it:

 

 

Conclusion

Self-signed certificates need a little work with your web browser. However, on localhost they have their place and can help you to start with HTTPS.

 

Article source

[mikie]

Guess the author didn't want to take the time to show a how-to with windows internet options for ie & edge - which is slightly more needed.

[Holmes]

There not slightly needed or point five percent needed or point one percent needed well for internet explorer they are not edge a how to would be helpful and Im sure with a google search you can find out.  Here is a way to do it with internet explorer:

 

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/681695/what-do-i-need-to-do-to-get-internet-explorer-8-to-accept-a-self-signed-certific/2955546#2955546

 

Look in that thread for the way for internet explorer for those that would want to use it in internet explorer.

[stylemessiah]

Why not actually create a proper self signed certificate with OpenSSLl's binary package and apply that to all browsers...which is what i do as i use squid proxy with ssl bump...

 

To save yourself downloading OpenSSL and cmdline fiddling, you an even do this online: http://www.mobilefish.com/services/ssl_certificates/ssl_certificates.php