SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED with Python3

Question

I apologize if this is a silly question, but I have been trying to teach myself how to use BeautifulSoup so that I can create a few projects.

I was following this link as a tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GzVNi0oTxQ

After following the exact same code as him, this is the error that I get:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/urllib/request.py", line 1240, in do_open
    h.request(req.get_method(), req.selector, req.data, headers)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/http/client.py", line 1083, in request
    self._send_request(method, url, body, headers)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/http/client.py", line 1128, in _send_request
    self.endheaders(body)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/http/client.py", line 1079, in endheaders
self._send_output(message_body)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/http/client.py", line 911, in _send_output
    self.send(msg)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/http/client.py", line 854, in send
    self.connect()
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/http/client.py", line 1237, in connect
server_hostname=server_hostname)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/ssl.py", line 376, in wrap_socket
_context=self)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/ssl.py", line 747, in __init__
self.do_handshake()
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/ssl.py", line 983, in do_handshake
    self._sslobj.do_handshake()
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/ssl.py", line 628, in do_handshake
    self._sslobj.do_handshake()
ssl.SSLError: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:645)

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "WorldCup.py", line 3, in <module>
    x = urllib.request.urlopen('https://www.google.com')
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/urllib/request.py", line 162, in urlopen
    return opener.open(url, data, timeout)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/urllib/request.py", line 465, in open
    response = self._open(req, data)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/urllib/request.py", line 483, in _open
'_open', req)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/urllib/request.py", line 443, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/urllib/request.py", line 1283, in https_open
    context=self._context, check_hostname=self._check_hostname)
  File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/urllib/request.py", line 1242, in do_open
raise URLError(err)
urllib.error.URLError: <urlopen error [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED]     certificate verify failed (_ssl.c:645)>

Can someone help me figure out how to fix this?

Answer 1

Go to the folder where Python is installed, e.g., in my case it is installed in the Applications folder with the folder name 'Python 3.6'. Now double click on 'Install Certificates.command'. After that error was gone.

Answer 2

In my case, I used the ssl module to "workaround" the certification like so:

import ssl

ssl._create_default_https_context = ssl._create_unverified_context

Then to read your link content, you can use:

urllib.request.urlopen(urllink)

Answer 3

On Debian 9 I had to:

$ sudo update-ca-certificates --fresh
$ export SSL_CERT_DIR=/etc/ssl/certs

I'm not sure why, but this enviroment variable was never set.

Answer 4

When you are using a self signed cert urllib3 version 1.25.3 refuses to ignore the SSL cert

To fix remove urllib3-1.25.3 and install urllib3-1.24.3

pip3 uninstall urllib3

pip3 install urllib3==1.24.3

Tested on Linux MacOS and Window$