Unable to Update WordPress – error:0D0890A1:asn1

October 07, 2015

Working with an older Yahoo! server, I recently ran into the following error when updating WordPress and installed themes / plugins.

Download failed. error:0D0890A1:asn1 encoding routines:func(137):reason(161)

I am able to perform updates manually via ftp, but this can be rather time consuming.

Thanks to this comment thread, and a simple plugin that allows a by-pass of the server’s outdating curl / openSSL library, updates are able to take place through the backend once again.

Create a php file within the plugins folder, and add the following code:

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Skip SSL Verify
Plugin URI: http://www.damiencarbery.com
Description: Skip SSL verify in curl downloads - fixes: Download failed. error:0D0890A1:asn1 encoding routines:func(137):reason(161).
Author: Damien Carbery
Version: 0.1

$Id:  $
*/

function ssv_skip_ssl_verify($ssl_verify) {
    return false;
}
add_filter('https_ssl_verify', 'ssv_skip_ssl_verify');
add_filter('https_local_ssl_verify', 'ssv_skip_ssl_verify');

Many thanks to the plugin author!