How do I fix certificate errors when running wget on an HTTPS URL in Cygwin?

Question

For example, running wget https://www.dropbox.com results in the following errors:

ERROR: The certificate of `www.dropbox.com' is not trusted.
ERROR: The certificate of `www.dropbox.com' hasn't got a known issuer.

score 281 · Answer 1 · edited Dec 03 '15 at 20:47

281

If you don't care about checking the validity of the certificate just add the --no-check-certificate option on the wget command-line. This worked well for me.

NOTE: This opens you up to man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks, and is not recommended for anything where you care about security.

edited Dec 03 '15 at 20:47

davr

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answered Jan 08 '13 at 15:24

DH4

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This worked for me. The other solutions regarding installing and updating the certificates didn't solve it. In my particular case there are no security concerns. – marlar Sep 14 '15 at 13:08

score 146 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 06 '13 at 16:26

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Looking at current hacky solutions in here, I feel I have to describe a proper solution after all.

First, you need to install the cygwin package ca-certificates via Cygwin's setup.exe to get the certificates.

Do NOT use curl or similar hacks to download certificates (as a neighboring answer advices) because that's fundamentally insecure and may compromise the system.

Second, you need to tell wget where your certificates are, since it doesn't pick them up by default in Cygwin environment. If you can do that either with the command-line parameter --ca-directory=/usr/ssl/certs (best for shell scripts) or by adding ca_directory = /usr/ssl/certs to ~/.wgetrc file.

You can also fix that by running ln -sT /usr/ssl /etc/ssl as pointed out in another answer, but that will work only if you have administrative access to the system. Other solutions I described do not require that.

answered Mar 06 '13 at 16:26

Shnatsel

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Thanks for this answer, and especially for the reminder about the ~/.wgetrc file. As a MacPorts user, my certs are located at /opt/local/etc/openssl, a fact which I hope someone finds handy. – Bryce Anderson Apr 09 '15 at 19:22
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And for fink, they're in /sw/etc/ssl/certs/ca-bundle.crt which comes as part of the `ca-bundle` package -- as described [here](https://finkers.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/wget-and-https/). – jhfrontz Oct 22 '15 at 22:15
Not sure if it's a typo but `ln -s /etc/ssl /usr/ssl` worked for me. – zkent Nov 10 '19 at 02:22
I installed and used the command again, the terminal said I had the newer version and still doesn't trusted github, I'll run with --no-check-certificate. – Danielr Sep 23 '21 at 22:19

score 119 · Answer 3 · edited Sep 14 '16 at 17:26

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If the problem is that a known root CA is missing and when you are using ubuntu or debian, then you can solve the problem with this one line:

sudo apt-get install ca-certificates

edited Sep 14 '16 at 17:26

SusanW

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answered Nov 10 '12 at 20:41

cguenther

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apt-get is on cygwin ? apt-get is on redgat ? ;) – Denis Chenu Jun 02 '14 at 12:30
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ca-certificates was already installed in my computer. Running `update-ca-certificates` solved the problem. – Tomás Fox Feb 19 '15 at 02:10
This worked also on my Synology DS215j with Debian chroot. – microspino Dec 18 '15 at 16:11
@fox `update-ca-certificates` is a ubuntu command, not available in debian. – Devy Aug 22 '16 at 16:21
@Devy It actually worked on my raspberry pi running debian wheezy – Luis Lobo Borobia Sep 05 '17 at 12:32

score 31 · Answer 4 · edited Jun 04 '18 at 05:12

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May be this will help:

wget --no-check-certificate https://blah-blah.tld/path/filename

edited Jun 04 '18 at 05:12

4b0

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answered Jun 04 '18 at 05:10

Alexey Soloviev

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One more: This situation also possible if you are using Kaspersky AntiVirus or same soft (by default it's replacing normal verified SSL certificate of site to their own) - so, you can disable checking SSL traffic in Antivirus soft. – Alexey Soloviev Jun 10 '18 at 16:22
Warning: with this solution, you will be susceptible to the man-in-middle attack – nav Feb 03 '21 at 16:40
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This does NOT fix the issue !! – yokodev Mar 16 '21 at 01:41

score 12 · Answer 5 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

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First, the SSL certificates need to be installed. Instructions (based on https://stackoverflow.com/a/4454754/278488):

pushd /usr/ssl/certs
curl http://curl.haxx.se/ca/cacert.pem | awk 'split_after==1{n++;split_after=0} /-----END CERTIFICATE-----/ {split_after=1} {print > "cert" n ".pem"}'
c_rehash

The above is enough to fix curl, but wget requires an extra symlink:

ln -sT /usr/ssl /etc/ssl

edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

Community

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answered Feb 10 '12 at 07:40

Russell Davis

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Is this not insecure to install root certificate authorities from a random web site, especially with haxx in the name? – Chloe Jun 29 '12 at 02:04
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@Chloe curl.haxx.se that is the dev site of cURL. Pretty trustworthy folks. – ylluminate Jul 18 '12 at 17:39
how do you fix it without curl? – Mark Lakata Sep 19 '12 at 20:41
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omfg the symlink was what I missed... searched 30min for a 1 liner fix > – Populus Sep 22 '12 at 19:29
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This is hacky on several levels. First, you don't need to download the certificates manually because there's a Cygwin package for that called "ca-certificates". Second, symlinking will only work if you have administrative access to the system or you've installed cygwin for your user account only, which is not always the case, so the code is not reliable. – Shnatsel Mar 06 '13 at 16:08

score 5 · Answer 6 · edited Jan 16 '18 at 18:38

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apt-get install ca-certificates

The s makes the difference ;)

edited Jan 16 '18 at 18:38

Milo

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answered Jan 16 '18 at 17:12

Pete

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There is no `apt-get` in cygwin, so this doesn't work. – jlh Apr 17 '18 at 09:37
@jlh Install apt-cyg and then you should be able to run tons of useful commands for installing packages. The above command translates to: $ apt-cyg install ca-certificates – alphaGeek Aug 11 '21 at 11:02

Denis Bakharev · Answer 7 · 2018-11-04T13:47:33.543

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I have the similar problem and fixed it by temporarily disabling my antivirus(Kaspersky Free 18.0.0.405). This AV has HTTPS interception module that automatically self-sign all certificates it finds in HTTPS responses.

Wget from Cygwin does not know anything about AV root certificate, so when it finds that website's certificate was signed with non trust certificate it prints that error.

To fix this permanently without disabling AV you should copy the AV root certificate from Windows certificate store to /etc/pki/ca-trust/source/anchors as .pem file(base64 encoding) and run update-ca-trust

edited Nov 04 '18 at 13:47

answered Oct 28 '18 at 23:15

Denis Bakharev

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Thank you, that was extremely helpful. I didn't know much about managing certificates in Windows 10, and I found this blog post helpful in following your instructions: https://www.hex64.net/blog/browsing-error-after-kaspersky-anti-virus-update/ – echawkes Jul 25 '21 at 21:47

score 3 · Answer 8 · answered Jul 17 '21 at 15:04

In my case, on raspberry pi 3B the timing was in the future (2025) that I need to update to the current local time using ntpdate by passing the time to the past and it solved the issue.

 $ sudo date +%Y%m%d -s "20210101"
 $ sudo ntpdate times1.mike.fi

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Oct 03 '20 at 23:24

I had a similar problem with wget to my own live web site returning errors after installing a new SSL certificate. I'd already checked several browsers and they didn't report any errors:

wget --no-cache -O - "https://example.com/..." ERROR: The certificate of ‘example.com’ is not trusted. ERROR: The certificate of ‘example.com’ hasn't got a known issuer.

The problem was I had installed the wrong certificate authority .pem/.crt file from the issuer. Usually they bundle the SSL certificate and CA file as a zip file, but DigiCert email you the certificate and you have to figure out the matching CA on your own. https://www.digicert.com/help/ has an SSL certificate checker which lists the SSL authority and the hopefully matching CA with a nice blue link graphic if they agree:

`SSL Cert: Issuer GeoTrust TLS DV RSA Mixed SHA256 2020 CA-1

CA: Subject GeoTrust TLS DV RSA Mixed SHA256 2020 CA-1 Valid from 16/Jul/2020 to 31/May/2023 Issuer DigiCert Global Root CA`

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Apr 19 '21 at 19:16

We just had this same issue come up when we installed a newly minted certificate just this last week. I've also seen it two other times...yet I'm slow to learn. In all 3 cases I had to get the "intermediate certificates" and install them. In other words My cert was good but it's signer or it's signer's signer wasn't correctly installed. Make sure you go to your certificate provider's site and get the correct intermediate certificates and install them as well on your server and then this warning will go away.

It might not JUST be the above, it could also be that clients don't have updated lists...but I would make sure it's not just you not fully installing the certificates right FIRST, and then after that going on to the clients and making sure their list is updated.

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Feb 27 '22 at 00:53

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Not exactly the same issue. On docker, I was mounting my host filesystem to /etc where OpenSSL certs were already installed which gets overwritten.

Changing the mounting to different filesystem fixed it.

answered Feb 27 '22 at 00:53

viggy28

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score 0 · Answer 12 · answered May 31 '22 at 12:13

Thanks to Denis Bakharev I've solved that case.

If someone has Cygwin wget not working because 'certificate not trusted' and having ca-certificates installed AND having Antivirus that automatically self-sign all certificates it finds in HTTPS responses then you need:

Get root certificate from your AV (I got mine with browser: open any https web-site, check it's certificate, go to Certification Path tab, click on Root certificate. Then click View certificate button, go to Details tab and click Copy to File... button. Default settings are fine for saving certificate in *.cer file).
Convert *.cer to *.crt. You can use Cygwin's OpenSSL with the following command:

openssl x509 -inform DER -in <your *.cer certificate file> -out <new cert>.crt

Move new *.crt file to ca-directory (in my case it was /etc/pki/tls/certs/).

That was enough for me to get wget working.

score -6 · Answer 13 · answered Aug 20 '14 at 03:13

-6

If you are using windows just go to control panel, click on automatic updates then click on Windows Update Web Site link. Just follow the step. At least this works for me, no more certificates issue i.e whenever I go to https://www.dropbox.com as before.

answered Aug 20 '14 at 03:13

Saiful

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This isn't related to Cygwin – Synthead Mar 08 '16 at 20:22

score -6 · Answer 14 · edited Jul 29 '17 at 07:12

-6

Just do

apt-get install ca-certificate

edited Jul 29 '17 at 07:12

Pang

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answered Jul 29 '17 at 06:50

tekintian

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How do I fix certificate errors when running wget on an HTTPS URL in Cygwin?

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