Get list of X509Certificate from cert store C# MVC

Question

I'm trying to get the list of certificates from cert store. This is the code I'm using from this post Get list of certificates from the certificate store in C#:

X509Store store = new X509Store(StoreName.My);
store.Open(OpenFlags.ReadOnly);
foreach (X509Certificate2 mCert in store.Certificates)
{
  // TODO
}

When I run this code from Test Explorer is finding all available certificates, but when I run it on my MVC application is not returning any certificate. I'm running VS 2013 as administrator.

Could you please address me what I'm doing wrong?

EDIT:

When I'm running the code on IIS Express I'm getting the list of certificates, but when I run it on Local IIS I'm not getting any results.

Regards,

Answer 1

Most of the time, you want to check the machine store certs, not the ones for your current user. To do that:

X509Store store = new X509Store(StoreLocation.LocalMachine);
store.Open(OpenFlags.ReadOnly | OpenFlags.OpenExistingOnly);
foreach (X509Certificate2 certificate in store.Certificates)
{
    // TODO
}

This gives you a consistent list, regardless of the IIS user.