Question about using pre-signed certificates

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From: RobbieK (rknierim_at_optonline.net)
Date: 01/09/05 

Date: 8 Jan 2005 17:20:54 -0800

I am hoping someone can help with a strange problem - I am not very
savvy with certificates, so bear with my ignorance in that area. I
have an ASP.NET (1.1) application that calls a web service (non .net)
over SSL. The owner of the web service asked for a certificate request
that he would sign and return back (I used OpenSSL to create the CR).
He provided the certificate and I imported it into my Local
Machine\Personal certs.

Things weren't working, so to ease troubleshooting, I moved to my local
laptop (imported the cert there) and created a quick Windows app with
VB.NET. After fixing the issue (was proxy server related), everything
was working perfectly. When I went back to the web server to implement
the working code, I received an error (see below). I copied my working
VB application directly onto the web server and also received the error
message.

System.Net.WebException: The underlying connection was closed: Could
not establish secure channel for SSL/TLS. --->
System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: The message received was
unexpected or badly formatted

The owner of the web service is telling me that he doesn't even see the
request coming to his server (at least at the point of SSL
handshaking... his log shows handshake errors if the server is
reached). I would guess a problem with the cert, but it works great
from my laptop. Weird thing is that the server where the CR was
created does not work, but fine from my laptop. I also tried copying
the application/importing cert to a 3rd computer... doesn't work. With
such little information reported in the error message, is there a way I
can tell more specifically what the problem is (and don't say to write
a SOAP extension :-) unless that's my only hope).

Thanks!!

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