Download failed. cURL error 60: SSL certificate problem

Are your WordPress plugin updates failing with this error message?:

Download failed. cURL error 60: SSL certificate problem: unable to get local issuer certificate

This problem can occur when you are running an older legacy version of WordPress. In such a scenario, it arises because the SSL security certificates bundled with your version of WordPress are out of date. This causes communication between WordPress on your host and the remote plugin server to fail.

But do not despair, there is a simple solution.

Updating your WordPress certificate bundle

The first step is to download a local copy of the latest WordPress certificate bundle from the repository:

Download the latest certificate bundle here

Once you have this file on your local PC, upload it via FTP or your hosting file manager to overwrite this file:

/wp-includes/certificates/ca-bundle.crt

After that, the server handshake should work correctly once again and updates should proceed smoothly.

Points to note

• Because you have overwritten core WordPress files, your changes may be lost whenever you update WordPress. Of course, the update may itself install the latest certificate bundle. If not, you will need to repeat the process above.
• If this fix does not resolve the issue, the cause may lie elsewhere. This might require you or your web hosting company to update the web server’s own SSL certificate or to update the CA root certificate used by PHP’s cURL application. You can download that here: https://curl.se/docs/caextract.html. There are notes on updating cURL here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29822686/curl-error-60-ssl-certificate-unable-to-get-local-issuer-certificate.