MAMP SSL error: "error:14077410:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO:sslv3 alert handshake failure"

The solution:

1. brew install openssl
2. Download and unpack the latest cURL

3. In the cURL source directory:

   LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/openssl/lib" CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/openssl/include" ./configure --prefix=/Applications/MAMP/Library/

4. make
5. make install
6. Restart MAMP

7. In PHP, between curl_init and curl_exec:

   curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false); 

The explanation:

The path to finding the solution started with this site, which describes a different SSL error on MAMP, and suggests recompiling a fresh version of cURL with
--prefix=/Applications/MAMP/Library/ to overwrite the one MAMP uses. I tried this but it didn't work. Later, something possessed me to study the cURL compile options, and I noticed instructions for specifying a different version of OpenSSL when compiling it. I decided to give it a try (promising myself that this was the last attempt and then I would give up). I installed an up to date OpenSSL package with Homebrew, and its helpful post-install info said:

If you build your own software and it requires this formula, you'll need to add to your build variables:LDFLAGS:  -L/usr/local/opt/openssl/libCPPFLAGS: -I/usr/local/opt/openssl/include

That looked similar to something I saw in the cURL compile options, which specified the correct syntax for the above:

LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/openssl/lib" CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/openssl/include" ./configure

I added back in the --prefix=/Applications/MAMP/Library/, followed by the usual make and make install, restarted MAMP, and sighed with relief.

I later discovered that one of the cURL options I had thrown in from another website was also necessary to avoid a different SSL error ("SSL certificate problem: unable to get local issuer certificate"). Setting CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER to false solved that one for me.

Here is a solution that works for me on MAMP Pro 3.5 running on OSX 10.11.1

In your PHP you may need to set the SSL version and the matching Cipher for curl_init():

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSLVERSION, 1);curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_CIPHER_LIST, 'TLSv1');

For the exact parameters you can pass to CURLOPT_SSLVERSION see: http://php.net/manual/en/function.curl-setopt.php

Also the following can display errors related to SSL versions being used to help find exact version conflict you have:

$error = curl_error($ch);echo $error;

More on this command: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.curl.php

Ive had the same problem. I solved it by instead using Apples preferred SecureTransport SSL program. The following worked for me:

1. Download the latest curl (zip) version from here
2. Go to your downloads folder and extract the zip file by double clicking on it. There will now be a folder with in your downloads folders with the extracted files.
3. Open terminal and navigate to the folder `cd ~/Downloads/curl-folder-name'
4. Then in terminal type ./configure --prefix=/Applications/MAMP/Library/ --with-darwinssl
5. make && make install

Restart MAMP and see if the changes worked. One way to check is to call the following on your MAMP php program in terminal:

/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.5.14/bin/php -r 'echo json_encode(curl_version(), JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);'

You should see "ssl_version": "SecureTransport"