Re: Asynchronous certificate verification and curl_multi

Daniel Stenberg via curl-library <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.web.curl.library
Message-ID <[email protected]>
On Wed, 13 Aug 2025, Ondra via curl-library wrote:

> According to https://curl.se/libcurl/c/CURLOPT_SSL_CTX_FUNCTION.html, “For 
> OpenSSL, asynchronous certificate verification via *SSL_set_retry_verify* is 
> supported. (Added in 8.3.0 <https://curl.se/ch/8.3.0.html>)”, so I have 
> attempted to use this approach; but I have found out, that although when I 
> register my callback via SSL_CTX_set_cert_verify_callback and then 
> successfully call SSL_set_retry_verify from it before returning from it 
> indeed ensures that next time the easy handle is processed by curl_multi, 
> the verification callback is called again, curl does not seem to do anything 
> more.

I think this is simply because this is not widely used nor understood 
functionality. Looking at it now, I think it was unfortunate that we accepted 
the change like that. Underdocumented and no test case that verifies it.

Maybe it is broken? Maybe it needs something else to work.

> The issue is that while the asynchronous verification is pending, we need 
> for the easy handle to be inert, and when verification finishes, we need to 
> resume processing of that handle. Currently it seems that the easy handle 
> stays in previous state with regards of sockets scheduled on it’s behalf by 
> multi into the eventloop; since this socket can be (and in some cases 
> actually is) triggered (eg. readable) for the whole time, this will lead to 
> busy looping (as the cert verify callback is invoked again and again and we 
> have to use SSL_set_retry_verify every time).

The question is really what else curl should do. I mean, if it doesn't do that 
then when should it call the callback again? I'm afraid I don't know how this 
asynch cert thing works in OpenSSL so I can't really tell.

> Please what is the proper way how to handle this issue?

I think it is pretty clear that this is unknown (to most of us). I think you 
need to figure that out and possibly provide a patch that makes curl work 
better with this. A test case and an example code would be excellent and bring 
bonus points.

-- 

  / daniel.haxx.se || https://rock-solid.curl.dev

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