I have an ASP.NET application that accesses private key in a certificate in the certificates store. On Windows Server 2003 I was able to use winhttpcertcfg.exe to give private key access to the NETWORK SERVICE account. How do I give permissions to access a Private Key in a certificate in the certificate store (Local Computer\Personal) on a Windows Server 2008 R2 in an IIS 7.5 website?

I've tried giving Full Trust access to "Everyone", "IIS AppPool\DefaultAppPool", "IIS\_IUSRS", and everyother security account I could find using the Certificates MMC (Server 2008 R2). However the below code demonstrates that the code does not have access to the Private Key of a certificate that was imported with the private key. The code instead throws and error everytime the private key property is accessed.

**Default.aspx**
````
<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="_Default" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "<http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd>">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head runat="server">
    <title></title>
</head>
<body>
    <form id="form1" runat="server">
    <div>
        <asp:Repeater ID="repeater1" runat="server">
            <HeaderTemplate>
                <table>
                    <tr>
                        <td>
                            Cert
                        </td>
                        <td>
                            Public Key
                        </td>
                        <td>
                            Private Key
                        </td>
                    </tr>
            </HeaderTemplate>
            <ItemTemplate>
                <tr>
                    <td>
                    <%#((X509Certificate2)Container.DataItem).GetNameInfo(X509NameType.SimpleName, false) %>
                    </td>
                    <td>
                    <%#((X509Certificate2)Container.DataItem).HasPublicKeyAccess() %>
                    </td>
                    <td>
                    <%#((X509Certificate2)Container.DataItem).HasPrivateKeyAccess() %>
                    </td>
                </tr>
            </ItemTemplate>
            <FooterTemplate>
                </table></FooterTemplate>
        </asp:Repeater>
    </div>
    </form>
</body>
</html>
````

**Default.aspx.cs**
````

using System;
using System.Security.Cryptography;
using System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates;
using System.Web.UI;
public partial class _Default : Page 
{
    public X509Certificate2Collection Certificates;
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        // Local Computer\Personal
        var store = new X509Store(StoreLocation.LocalMachine);
        // create and open store for read-only access
        store.Open(OpenFlags.ReadOnly);
        Certificates = store.Certificates;
        repeater1.DataSource = Certificates;
        repeater1.DataBind();
    }
}
public static class Extensions
{
    public static string HasPublicKeyAccess(this X509Certificate2 cert)
    {
        try
        {
            AsymmetricAlgorithm algorithm = cert.PublicKey.Key;
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            return "No";
        }
        return "Yes";
    }
    public static string HasPrivateKeyAccess(this X509Certificate2 cert)
    {
        try
        {
            string algorithm = cert.PrivateKey.KeyExchangeAlgorithm;
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            return "No";
        }
        return "Yes";
    }
}
````