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The problem I am experiencing is getting the .Net framework to recognize
client certificates while executing code on the client.

I have an ASP.NET web service application written that requires a client
certificate when making a web method request. This web service works
fine when called from a web browser, taking advantage of the simple test
pages the ASP.Net framework provides.

I wrote a client side, web service test harness as a .Net Console
application. I’ve been racking my brain trying to get this to work.
Specifically, the error is a 403 HTTP status back from the server.

The only comments I could find searching the web and Usenet regarding
this problem I am experiencing are contained here:
http://tinyurl.com/7k2l2

This web log really does not provide a solution and the writing is a bit
unclear, at least to me. Whether I pass in a .cer file or a .pfx file
to X509Certificate.CreateFromSignedFile(), a 403 error results.
Stepping through my code, after creating an instance of the .Net
X509Certificate object, its properties are null.

The pfx file contains the private key of course, but it is *always*
password protected, even when strong protection is not implemented.
Perhaps I’m missing something. Any help give is appreciated. Thanks!