SSL SAN Self Signed Certificate Creation in PowerShell

Open powershell as administrator

$cert = New-SelfSignedCertificate -DnsName "server.docker.local", "localhost", "host.docker.internal" -CertStoreLocation cert:\localmachine\my

#export it for docker container to pick up later
$password = ConvertTo-SecureString -String "Pa55w0rd!" -Force -AsPlainText
Export-PfxCertificate -Cert $cert -FilePath C:\https\aspnetapp.pfx -Password $password

# trust it on our host machine
$store = New-Object System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Store "TrustedPublisher","LocalMachine"
$store.Open("ReadWrite")
$store.Add($cert)
$store.Close()

When one container needs to talk to another container it’s a slightly different story: dev tools don’t have control over containers and cannot magically trust certificates inside there. We can try opt for properly signed certificates (from Let’s Encrypt for example), but that’s a whole different story and is likely not worth it for development machines.

The above powershell script is also going to fall short as it’s only adding the cert onto development machine – containers will keep failing to validate the cert. The solution would build on the same principles: generate a self-signed cert and trust it everywhere. Since most Docker containers run Linux we might have better luck going the opposite direction and generating certs in PEM format using a well known tool OpenSSL. Then we’d use Dockerfiles to inject this cert into all our containers and finally we’d convert it into format suitable for our host Windows machine (PKCS#12).

Download OpenSSL from https://slproweb.com/products/Win32OpenSSL.html or https://wiki.openssl.org/index.php/Binaries

$certPass = "Pa55w0rd!"
$certSubj = "host.docker.internal"
$certAltNames = "DNS:localhost,DNS:host.docker.internal,DNS:sign_api" # we can also add individual IP addresses here like so: IP:127.0.0.1
$opensslPath="C:\Program Files\OpenSSL-Win64\bin" #aOpenSSL needs to be present on the host, no installation is necessary though
$workDir="C:\Users\aiybar\source\repos\AmScreenMicroServices"
$dockerDir=Join-Path $workDir "ApiSign"

#generate a self-signed cert with multiple domains
Start-Process -NoNewWindow -Wait -FilePath (Join-Path $opensslPath "openssl.exe") -ArgumentList "req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout ",
                                          (Join-Path $workDir aspnetapp.key),
                                          "-out", (Join-Path $dockerDir aspnetapp.crt),
                                          "-subj `"/CN=$certSubj`" -addext `"subjectAltName=$certAltNames`""

# this time round we convert PEM format into PKCS#12 (aka PFX) so .net core app picks it up
Start-Process -NoNewWindow -Wait -FilePath (Join-Path $opensslPath "openssl.exe") -ArgumentList "pkcs12 -export -in ", 
                                           (Join-Path $dockerDir aspnetapp.crt),
                                           "-inkey ", (Join-Path $workDir aspnetapp.key),
                                           "-out ", (Join-Path $workDir aspnetapp.pfx),
                                           "-passout pass:$certPass"

$password = ConvertTo-SecureString -String $certPass -Force -AsPlainText
# $cert = Get-PfxCertificate -FilePath (Join-Path $workDir "aspnetapp.pfx")  $password #### OLD way - it complains about password parameter ####
$PfxData=Get-PfxData -FilePath (Join-Path $workDir "aspnetapp.pfx") -Password $password
$cert = $SigningCert=$PfxData.EndEntityCertificates[0]

# and still, trust it on our host machine
$store = New-Object System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Store [System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.StoreName]::Root,"LocalMachine"
$store.Open("ReadWrite")
$store.Add($cert)
$store.Close()

Example: Running Identity Server Now we have our certs (for example, located in %USERPROFILE%.aspnet\https). Here’s a quick how to tell asp.net core -base containers to pick them up:

docker pull your_docker_image
docker run --rm -it -p 8000:80 -p 8001:443 -e ASPNETCORE_URLS="https://+;http://+" -e ASPNETCORE_HTTPS_PORT=8001 -e ASPNETCORE_Kestrel__Certificates__Default__Password="123123" -e ASPNETCORE_Kestrel__Certificates__Default__Path=\https\aspnetapp.pfx -v %USERPROFILE%\.aspnet\https:C:\https\ your_docker_image

docker run <your image> --rm -it -p 8000:80 -p 8001:443 -e ASPNETCORE_URLS="https://+;http://+" -e ASPNETCORE_HTTPS_PORT=8001 -e ASPNETCORE_Kestrel__Certificates__Default__Password="123123" -e ASPNETCORE_Kestrel__Certificates__Default__Path=/https/aspnetapp.pfx

Or in docker-compose format:

version: '3'
services:
  identity_server:
    image: mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/core/samples:aspnetapp    
    environment: 
      - ASPNETCORE_URLS=https://+:443;http://+:80
      - ASPNETCORE_Kestrel__Certificates__Default__Password=password_here
      - ASPNETCORE_Kestrel__Certificates__Default__Path=/https/aspnetapp.pfx
    volumes:
      - ~/.aspnet/https/:/https/:ro 
    container_name: identity_server
    ports:
      - "8443:443"
      - "8080:80"