Other way to fix browser security warning when accessing localhost web server with self signed certificate

Question

I know importing the certificate into browser trust store can dismiss the warning, but is it the only workaround? Is it possible using a domain (with a valid SSL) to reverse proxy the localhost web server: redirecting user's request to the localhost?

Answer 1

If you have an external domain and a valid certificate for it (i.e. both certificate and key) you could configure your localhost server to serve this domain and use this certificate. To make sure that any local requests to this domain actually reach your local server instead of the external IP you need the appropriate name resolution though. This can be done for example by modifying the hosts file (i.e. /etc/hosts on UNIX, c:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts on Windows).

In other words:

• Configure the local web server to expect requests for example.com instead of localhost, i.e. set certificate and key you have for example.com and configure the expected name to example.com.
• Modify the local hosts file to resolve example.com with 127.0.0.1.
• Access the local web server with the local browser by using the URL https://example.com. Due to the changed local hosts file it will use 127.0.0.1 as the IP address for example.com and thus access the local web server. This will provide the publicly trusted certificate for example.com so that the browser will not complain (issuer CA is trusted and subject of certificate matches the URL).

Remember to change your local hosts file back if you want to access the real (external) example.com.