c: Copyright (C) Daniel Stenberg, daniel@haxx.se, et al. SPDX-License-Identifier: curl Long: cacert Arg: Help: CA certificate to verify peer against Protocols: TLS Category: tls Added: 7.5 Multi: single See-also:

  • capath
  • insecure Example:
  • --cacert CA-file.txt $URL

--cacert

Tells curl to use the specified certificate file to verify the peer. The file may contain multiple CA certificates. The certificate(s) must be in PEM format. Normally curl is built to use a default file for this, so this option is typically used to alter that default file.

curl recognizes the environment variable named ‘CURL_CA_BUNDLE’ if it is set and the TLS backend is not Schannel, and uses the given path as a path to a CA cert bundle. This option overrides that variable.

The windows version of curl automatically looks for a CA certs file named ‘curl-ca-bundle.crt’, either in the same directory as curl.exe, or in the Current Working Directory, or in any folder along your PATH.

(iOS and macOS only) If curl is built against Secure Transport, then this option is supported for backward compatibility with other SSL engines, but it should not be set. If the option is not set, then curl uses the certificates in the system and user Keychain to verify the peer, which is the preferred method of verifying the peer's certificate chain.

(Schannel only) This option is supported for Schannel in Windows 7 or later (added in 7.60.0). This option is supported for backward compatibility with other SSL engines; instead it is recommended to use Windows' store of root certificates (the default for Schannel).