Python Requests throwing SSLError

Understanding SSL certification and its verification

When dealing with SSL certificate verification, it's crucial to comprehend verify's role in requests.get. By default, it's set to True, and hence performing server's SSL certificate verification through a set of trusted CA certificates.

Customizing your certificate validation

• Default Bundle: Requests uses a CA bundle supplied by Certifi.
• Custom CA Bundle: Pass a CA_BUNDLE path to verify for self-signed certificates or private CAs.
• Environmental Settings: Use REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE as an environment variable to assign the CA bundle path.
• Linux CA Bundle: The default CA path is typically /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt on Linux.
• Curl CA Bundle: You can choose cacert.pem from Curl for SSL validation.

Dealing with common SSLErrors

In case of SSL3_GET_SERVER_CERTIFICATE or similar SSL verification issues, confirm that:

• The CA file is correctly established and is accessible to the requests library.
• The server certificate is signed by a CA from within the CA file.
• The environmental variable REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE is correctly set or provided as an argument.

Ensure to remain updated with requests' latest version, for the most recent security enhancements and patches.

Security enhancement without lowering your guard

Consider using requests[security] for additional SSL validation features, as the choice of verify=False should be avoided unless necessary.

Implementing secure requests: best practices

Setting verify=False is an easy bypass, but leaves your connection vulnerably exposed. You're better off setting the SSL certificate path in your requests using os.path.join.

# let's put safety first, shall we?
cafile = os.path.join('/path/to/your/certificate', 'my_cert.pem')
response = requests.get('https://example.com', verify=cafile)
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Use the certifi library to manage Root Certificates which grants a path to Mozilla's CA Bundle, deemed trustworthy by requests.

Last but not least, watch your REQUESTS_CA_BUNDLE environment variable setting, like a hawk, in your application's code. It could be the source of those pesky SSL errors!