SSL error SSL3_GET_SERVER_CERTIFICATE:certificate verify failed

Question

After upgrading to PHP 5.6 I get an error when trying to connect to a server via fsockopen()..

The certificate on the server (host) is self-signed

PHP Warning: fsockopen(): SSL operation failed with code 1. OpenSSL Error messages: error:14090086:SSL routines:SSL3_GET_SERVER_CERTIFICATE:certificate verify failed

code

if($fp = fsockopen($host, $port, $errno, $errstr, 20)){
    $this->request = 'POST '.substr($this->url, strlen($this->host)).' HTTP/1.1'.$crlf
        .'Host: '.$this->host.$crlf
        .'Content-Length: '.$content_length.$crlf
        .'Connection: Close'.$crlf.$crlf
        .$body;
    fwrite($fp, $this->request);

    while($line = fgets($fp)){
        if($line !== false){
            $this->response .= $line;
        }
    }

    fclose($fp);
}

Have tried

# cd /etc/ssl/certs/
# wget http://curl.haxx.se/ca/cacert.pem

php.ini

openssl.cafile = "/etc/ssl/certs/cacert.pem"

But the script still fails to work

update

This works

echo file_get_contents("/etc/ssl/certs/cacert.pem");

update 2

$contextOptions = array(
    'ssl' => array(
        'verify_peer' => true, // You could skip all of the trouble by changing this to false, but it's WAY uncool for security reasons.
        'cafile' => '/etc/ssl/certs/cacert.pem',
        //'CN_match' => 'example.com', // Change this to your certificates Common Name (or just comment this line out if not needed)
        'ciphers' => 'HIGH:!SSLv2:!SSLv3',
        'disable_compression' => true,
    )
);

$context = stream_context_create($contextOptions);

$fp = stream_socket_client("{$host}:{$port}", $errno, $errstr, 20, STREAM_CLIENT_CONNECT, $context);

error

PHP Warning: stream_socket_client(): SSL operation failed with code 1. OpenSSL Error messages: error:14090086:SSL routines:SSL3_GET_SERVER_CERTIFICATE:certificate verify failed

Answer 1

The file that you downloaded (http://curl.haxx.se/ca/cacert.pem) is a bundle of the root certificates from the major trusted certificate authorities. You said that the remote host has a self-signed SSL certificate, so it didn't use a trusted certificate. The openssl.cafile setting needs to point to the CA certificate that was used to sign the SSL certificate on the remote host. PHP 5.6 has been improved over previous versions of PHP to now verify peer certificates and host names by default (http://php.net/manual/en/migration56.openssl.php)

You'll need to locate the CA certificate that was generated on the server that signed the SSL certificate and copy it to this server. If you're using self-signed certificates, you'll need to add the CA cert that was used to sign the remote host's SSL certificate to the trusted store on the server you're connecting from OR use stream contexts to use that certificate for each individual request. Adding it to the trusted certificates is the simplest solution. Just add the contents of the remote host's CA cert to the end of the cacert.pem file you downloaded.

Previous:

fsockopen doesn't support stream contexts, so use stream_socket_client instead. It returns a resource that can be used with all the commands that fsockopen resources can.

This should be a drop in replacement for the snippet you have in your question:

<?php

$contextOptions = array(
    'ssl' => array(
        'verify_peer' => true, // You could skip all of the trouble by changing this to false, but it's WAY uncool for security reasons.
        'cafile' => '/etc/ssl/certs/cacert.pem',
        'CN_match' => 'example.com', // Change this to your certificates Common Name (or just comment this line out if not needed)
        'ciphers' => 'HIGH:!SSLv2:!SSLv3',
        'disable_compression' => true,
    )
);

$context = stream_context_create($contextOptions);

$fp = stream_socket_client("tcp://{$host}:{$port}", $errno, $errstr, 20, STREAM_CLIENT_CONNECT, $context);

if (!$fp) {

    echo "$errstr ({$errno})<br />\n";

}else{
    
    $this->request = 'POST '.substr($this->url, strlen($this->host)).' HTTP/1.1'.$crlf
        .'Host: '.$this->host.$crlf
        .'Content-Length: '.$content_length.$crlf
        .'Connection: Close'.$crlf.$crlf
        .$body;

    fwrite($fp, $this->request);

    while (!feof($fp)) {
        $this->response .= fgets($fp);
    }

    fclose($fp);

}

Answer 2

I faced a similar issue during work with Ubuntu 16.04 by using Docker. In my case that was a problem with Composer, but error message (and thus the problem) was the same.

Because of minimalist Docker-oriented base image I had missing ca-certificates package and simple apt-get install ca-certificates helped me.

Answer 3

Add

$mail->SMTPOptions = array(
'ssl' => array(
    'verify_peer' => false,
    'verify_peer_name' => false,
    'allow_self_signed' => true
));

before

mail->send()

and replace

require "mailer/class.phpmailer.php";

with

require "mailer/PHPMailerAutoload.php";

Answer 4

The problem is in new PHP Version in macOS Sierra

Please add

stream_context_set_option($ctx, 'ssl', 'verify_peer', false);

Answer 5

In my case, I was on CentOS 7 and my php installation was pointing to a certificate that was being generated through update-ca-trust. The symlink was /etc/pki/tls/cert.pem pointing to /etc/pki/ca-trust/extracted/pem/tls-ca-bundle.pem. This was just a test server and I wanted my self signed cert to work properly. So in my case...

# My root ca-trust folder was here. I coped the .crt file to this location
# and renamed it to a .pem
/etc/pki/ca-trust/source/anchors/self-signed-cert.pem

# Then run this command and it will regenerate the certs for you and
# include your self signed cert file.
update-ca-trust

Then some of my api calls started working as my cert was now trusted. Also if your ca-trust gets updated through yum or something, this will rebuild your root certificates and still include your self signed cert. Run man update-ca-trust for more info on what to do and how to do it. :)