What do I need to do to get Internet Explorer 8 to accept a self signed certificate?

Jay picture Jay · Mar 25, 2009 · Viewed 480.3k times · Source

We use self signed certificates on our intranet. What do I need to do to get Internet Explorer 8 to accept them without showing an error message to the user? What we did for Internet Explorer 7 apparently isn't working.

EDIT: Internet Explorer 7 wouldn't show any errors if I put the certificate into trusted root certification authorities. Internet Explorer 8 seems to show errors even with the certificate there.

Answer

Aya picture Aya · Sep 11, 2009

How to make IE8 trust a self-signed certificate in 20 irritating steps

  1. Browse to the site whose certificate you want to trust.
  2. When told “There is a problem with this website's security certificate.”, choose “Continue to this website (not recommended).”
  3. Select Tools➞Internet Options.
  4. Select Security➞Trusted sites➞Sites.
  5. Confirm the URL matches, and click “Add” then “Close”.
  6. Close the “Internet Options” dialog box with either “OK” or “Cancel”.
  7. Refresh the current page.
  8. When told “There is a problem with this website's security certificate.”, choose “Continue to this website (not recommended).”
  9. Click on “Certificate Error” at the right of the address bar and select “View certificates”.
  10. Click on “Install Certificate...”, then in the wizard, click “Next”.
  11. On the next page select “Place all certificates in the following store”.
  12. Click “Browse”, select “Trusted Root Certification Authorities”, and click “OK”.
  13. Back in the wizard, click “Next”, then “Finish”.
  14. If you get a “Security Warning” message box, click “Yes”.
  15. Dismiss the message box with “OK”.
  16. Select Tools➞Internet Options.
  17. Select Security➞Trusted sites➞Sites.
  18. Select the URL you just added, click “Remove”, then “Close”.
  19. Now shut down all running instances of IE, and start up IE again.
  20. The site’s certificate should now be trusted.