IIS URL Rewrite : 403 - Forbidden: Access is denied

SSL was enabled in IIS. I just read somewhere that in SSL Settings Require SSL need to be unchecked when using URL Rewrite 2.0.

I deselect the Require SSL and click Apply. Its working fine now.

I was getting the same error; here was my solution, in case it helps others.

My rule was rewriting URLs coming in to the Default Web Site's root application ("/") to "/public", but I was getting a 403 error. The "/public" application worked fine if I requested it directly, and it also worked fine if I disabled the rewrite rule, so permissions there were not the issue.

"Require SSL" was not checked, as noted in an earlier answer.

Looking at the IIS log file, I found that the specific flavor of error was 403.18 - "Cannot execute requested URL in the current application pool".

The web site's root application needs to be assigned the same application pool as the application you're sending the request to.