Installation failures: FATAL dvips - SSL connect error

What I tried to do

install MiKTeX on Linux Mint 18.3 (64-bit VM) following the advertised procedure to install a key, add the repository, then:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install miktex

What I expected to happen

MiKTeX is installed

What happened instead

The first error indicated that dvips35.map was missing, so I checked the dvips install:

$ dvips --version

Unfortunately, the package miktex-dvips could not be installed.Please check the log file:
/home/gwhite/.miktex/texmfs/data/miktex/log/dvips.log
This is dvips(k) 5.997 Copyright 2017 Radical Eye Software
MiKTeX 2.9.6530
Copyright 2017 Radical Eye Software.
There is NO warranty.  You may redistribute this software
under the terms of the GNU General Public License
and the Dvips copyright.
For more information about these matters, see the files
named COPYING and dvips.h.
Primary author of Dvips: T. Rokicki.

The log:

2017-12-27 08:05:46,723-0400 INFO  dvips - starting with command line: dvips --version
2017-12-27 08:05:46,724-0400 INFO  dvips - installing package miktex-dvips triggered by dvips/config/config.ps
2017-12-27 08:05:46,912-0400 FATAL dvips - SSL connect error
2017-12-27 08:05:46,912-0400 FATAL dvips - Info: 
2017-12-27 08:05:46,912-0400 FATAL dvips - Source: Libraries/MiKTeX/PackageManager/CurlWebSession.cpp
2017-12-27 08:05:46,912-0400 FATAL dvips - Line: 348
2017-12-27 08:05:46,914-0400 INFO  dvips - finishing with exit code 0

Using strace showed tht initexmf failed due to SSL connection problems with 198.19.97.17 on port 443 (https).

In firefox, attempts to connect to https://198.19.97.17 give:

An error occurred during a connection to 198.19.97.17. SSL received an unexpected Client Hello 
handshake message. Error code: SSL_ERROR_RX_UNEXPECTED_CLIENT_HELLO

In Mozilla's sslerr.html

Received an SSL handshake that was inappropriate for the current state:

All the error codes in the following block indicate that the local socket received an SSL3 
handshake message from the remote peer at a time when it was inappropriate for the peer to have 
sent this message. For example, a server received a message from another server. This probably 
indicates a flaw in the remote peer's implementation.

Using Goggle Chrome on macOS gives a somewhat different error message:

This site can’t provide a secure connection 198.19.97.17 sent an invalid response 
ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR"

I'm behind a corporate firewall, so it is quite possible that the the firewall and 198.19.97.17 aren't playing nicely together. PC users at this site are also unable to install packages. We are, however, able to connect to https://miktex.org/.

MiKTeX / miktex