Most often, we come across the CURLOPT error when we change to a PHP version greater than 7.0.

As part of our Server Management Services, we assist our customers with several PHP queries.

Today, let us see how we can fix the PHP version error.

CURLOPT error

When we try for a PHP version greater than 7.0, websites suddenly stop working with the error:

[01-Jan-2021 00:00:00 UTC] PHP Fatal error: [snuffleupagus][disabled_function] Aborted execution on call of the function ‘curl_setopt’, because its argument ‘$option’ content (81) matched the rule ‘Please don’t turn CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST off.’

From the package description, this occurs due to the following reasons.

To drastically raise the cost of attacks against websites, there is a PHP7+ module. It is Snuffleupagus.

To achieve this, Snuffleupagus kills the entire bug classes and provides a powerful virtual-patching system. This will allow the administrator to fix specific vulnerabilities without having to touch the PHP code.

This package adds extra security rules to PHP, causing insecure CURLOPT commands to fail.

Moving ahead, let us see how our Support Techs resolve this issue.

Initially, we need to ensure that the site does not disable SSL VerifyHost through curl_setopts() in the PHP code.

On WordPress, we can try to patch this via the theme’s functions.php.

To do so, we add the following line:

add_filter( ‘https_local_ssl_verify’, ‘__return_true’ );

Generally, this technique is not recommended.

However, if we’re unable to patch the website, we can disable the extension in WHM > EasyApache 4.

To do so, we need to uninstall the ea-php7X-php-snuffleupagus package for the PHP version we’re having trouble with.

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Conclusion

In short, the CURLOPT error occurs when we try to change to a PHP version greater than 7.0. Today, we saw an effective method employed by our Support Techs to fix this issue for our customers.