Get List of Certificate Store Names in C#

Question

I am able to get certificate collection in particulaer store by using the following statment.

X509Store.Certificates

But not sure how I can get the list of certificate store names present under current user or local machine. I also checked the StoreName enumeration but it only lists the standard store names but not the ones defined by the user.

I want the list of CERTIFICATE STORES, not the list of certificates in the particular store.

Answer 1

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa376058(VS.85).aspx

Don't think there's a managed .net way of doing this. Possibly the closest may be to use .net's registry functions to read the store names from the registry?

Answer 2

You can invoke Powershell script from C# code. Here is an sample function (You need to add in project a reference to System.Management.Automation assembly) which returns a list of certificate stores for LocalMachine:

    private static String[] GetLocalMachineStoresNames()
    {
        List<String> names;

        using (RunspaceInvoke runtimeInvoke = new RunspaceInvoke())
        {

            Collection<PSObject> results = runtimeInvoke.Invoke(@" cd cert:\LocalMachine; dir | % { $_.Name }");

            names = new List<String>();

            for (Int32 q = 0; q < results.Count; q++)
            {
                names.Add(results[q].BaseObject.ToString());
            }
        }

        return names.ToArray();
    }

Answer 3

As dotalchemy mentioned, you have to read the names from the registry. Check out the following site for locations: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa388136(v=vs.85).aspx

For example the CERT_SYSTEM_STORE_LOCAL_MACHINE is located at

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SystemCertificates

Here's how to get the names/stores

using (var rootKeySystemCertificates = Microsoft.Win32.Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey("SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\SystemCertificates", false))
{
    foreach (var subKeyName in rootKeySystemCertificates.GetSubKeyNames())
    {
        var store = new X509Store(subKeyName, StoreLocation.LocalMachine);
        store.Open(OpenFlags.ReadOnly);
        //your part with store.Certificates...
        store.Close();
    }
}