| Peer SSL Certificate Verification |
| ================================= |
| |
| Starting in 7.10, libcurl performs peer SSL certificate verification by |
| default. This is done by installing a default CA cert bundle on 'make install' |
| (or similar), that CA bundle package is used by default on operations against |
| SSL servers. |
| |
| Alas, if you communicate with HTTPS servers using certifcates that are signed |
| by CAs present in the bundle, you will not notice any changed behavior and you |
| will seeminglessly get a higher security level on your SSL connections since |
| can be sure that the remote server really is the one it claims to be. |
| |
| If the remote server uses a self-signed certificate, or if you don't install |
| curl's CA cert bundle or if it uses a certificate signed by a CA that isn't |
| included in the bundle, then you need to do one of the following: |
| |
| 1. Tell libcurl to *not* verify the peer. With libcurl you disable with with |
| curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, FALSE); |
| |
| With the curl command tool, you disable this with -k/--insecure. |
| |
| 2. Get a CA certificate that can verify the remote server and use the proper |
| option to point out this CA cert for verification when connecting. For |
| libcurl hackers: curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_CAPATH, capath); |
| |
| With the curl command tool: --cacert [file] |
| |
| This upgrade procedure has been deemed The Right Thing even though it adds |
| this extra trouble for some users, since it adds security to a majority of the |
| SSL connections that previously weren't really secure. |
| |
| It turned out many people were using previous versions of curl/libcurl without |
| realizing the need for the CA cert options to get truly secure SSL |
| connections. |
