Hidden Lead Bytes in Thumbprint while copying from Windows

Microsoft digs lots of pits, and I keep jumping among them.

Recently, I wrote a program using HttpClient in dotNet to post some data to server through HTTP Post. The server is set with client certificate required.

My designing is simple:

  1. Open X509Store to query the certificate by using thumbprint.
  2. Attach the certificate found in step 1 into WebRequestHandler.
  3. Pass the handler created in step 2 to the instance of HttpClient and send the request.

Required by step 1, I need to type the thumbprint of the certificate into code. The steps I did:

  1. Open certificate from Windows. It’s shown up like this:
  2. Copy the text of Thumbprint and paste it into a notepad.
  3. Replace all spaces to nothing.
  4. Copy the new text into code.

When I run the code, it ended in a strange way. No certificate is found by using the thumbprint I provided. I dig a long time before I found this pit prepared by Microsoft:
The text, copied from the window above (in step 1), contains hidden lead bytes “0x200E”. These bytes won’t display in code view of Visual Studio, nor in Notepad.

After these removed, problem is gone as well.

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