powershell - Invoke-WebRequest SSL fails?

Question

When I try to use Invoke-WebRequest I'm getting some weird error:

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://idp.safenames.com/"

Invoke-WebRequest : The underlying connection was closed: An unexpected error occurred on a send.

I'm not sure what's causing it, as the website itself seems fine.

Even with all the "ignore ssl errors" functions around stackoverflow, it's still not working, making me wonder if it's related to SSL at all.

Answer 1

As BaconBits notes, .NET version > 4.5 uses SSLv3 and TLS 1.0 by default.

You can change this behavior by setting the SecurityProtocol policy with the ServicePointManager class:

PS C:> $AllProtocols = [System.Net.SecurityProtocolType]'Ssl3,Tls,Tls11,Tls12'
PS C:> [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = $AllProtocols
PS C:> (Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://idp.safenames.com/").StatusCode
200

This will apply to all requests in the AppDomain (so it only applies to the current instance of the host application).

---

There's a module on GitHub and in PSGallery that can manage these settings now:

Install-Module BetterTls -Scope CurrentUser
Import-Module BetterTls
Enable-Tls -Tls11 -Tls12