Python Requests throwing SSLError

Question

I'm working on a simple script that involves CAS, jspring security check, redirection, etc. I would like to use Kenneth Reitz's python requests because it's a great piece of work! However, CAS requires getting validated via SSL so I have to get past that step first. I don't know what Python requests is wanting? Where is this SSL certificate supposed to reside?

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./test.py", line 24, in <module>
  response = requests.get(url1, headers=headers)
  File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/requests/api.py", line 52, in get
  File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/requests/api.py", line 40, in request
  File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/requests/sessions.py", line 209, in request 
  File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/requests/models.py", line 624, in send
  File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/requests/models.py", line 300, in _build_response
  File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/requests/models.py", line 611, in send
requests.exceptions.SSLError: [Errno 1] _ssl.c:503: error:14090086:SSL routines:SSL3_GET_SERVER_CERTIFICATE:certificate verify failed

Answer 1

I ran into the same issue. Turns out I hadn't installed the intermediate certificate on my server (just append it to the bottom of your certificate as seen below).

https://www.digicert.com/ssl-support/pem-ssl-creation.htm

Make sure you have the ca-certificates package installed:

sudo apt-get install ca-certificates

Updating the time may also resolve this:

sudo apt-get install ntpdate
sudo ntpdate -u ntp.ubuntu.com

If you're using a self-signed certificate, you'll probably have to add it to your system manually.

Answer 2

There is currently an issue in the requests module causing this error, present in v2.6.2 to v2.12.4 (ATOW): https://github.com/kennethreitz/requests/issues/2573

Workaround for this issue is adding the following line: requests.packages.urllib3.util.ssl_.DEFAULT_CIPHERS = 'ECDH+AESGCM:DH+AESGCM:ECDH+AES256:DH+AES256:ECDH+AES128:DH+AES:ECDH+3DES:DH+3DES:RSA+AESGCM:RSA+AES:RSA+3DES:!aNULL:!MD5:!DSS'

Answer 3

I was having a similar or the same certification validation problem. I read that OpenSSL versions less than 1.0.2, which requests depends upon sometimes have trouble validating strong certificates (see here). CentOS 7 seems to use 1.0.1e which seems to have the problem.

I wasn't sure how to get around this problem on CentOS, so I decided to allow weaker 1024bit CA certificates.

import certifi # This should be already installed as a dependency of 'requests'
requests.get("https://example.com", verify=certifi.old_where())

Answer 4

I face the same problem using gspread and these commands works for me:

sudo pip uninstall -y certifi
sudo pip install certifi==2015.04.28

Answer 5

Too late to the party I guess but I wanted to paste the fix for fellow wanderers like myself! So the following worked out for me on Python 3.7.x

Type the following in your terminal

pip install --upgrade certifi      # hold your breath..

Try running your script/requests again and see if it works (I'm sure it won't be fixed yet!). If it didn't work then try running the following command in the terminal directly

open /Applications/Python\ 3.6/Install\ Certificates.command  # please replace 3.6 here with your suitable python version

Answer 6

In case you have a library that relies on requests and you cannot modify the verify path (like with pyvmomi) then you'll have to find the cacert.pem bundled with requests and append your CA there. Here's a generic approach to find the cacert.pem location:

windows

C:\>python -c "import requests; print requests.certs.where()"
c:\Python27\lib\site-packages\requests-2.8.1-py2.7.egg\requests\cacert.pem

linux

#  (py2.7.5,requests 2.7.0, verify not enforced)
root@host:~/# python -c "import requests; print requests.certs.where()"
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/certifi/cacert.pem

#  (py2.7.10, verify enforced)
root@host:~/# python -c "import requests; print requests.certs.where()"
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/requests/cacert.pem

btw. @requests-devs, bundling your own cacerts with request is really, really annoying... especially the fact that you do not seem to use the system ca store first and this is not documented anywhere.

update

in situations, where you're using a library and have no control over the ca-bundle location you could also explicitly set the ca-bundle location to be your host-wide ca-bundle:

REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE=/etc/ssl/certs/ca-bundle.crt python -c "import requests; requests.get('https://somesite.com';)"