Certificate verification fails for curl on Mac

Symptoms:

  • curl on the Mac returns a certificate verification error even when the --cacert option is used.

Resolution:

Apple’s integration of curl with their keychain technology disables the --cacert option. See http://curl.haxx.se/mail/archive-2013-10/0036.html for more information.

You can use another tool, such as wget, to test certificates. Alternately, you can add the certificate for the signing certificate authority MacOS system keychain, using a procedure similar to the one detailed at the Apple knowledge base. Be sure to add the signing CA’s certificate and not the server’s certificate.