Use of TLS <1.2 causes TLSV1_ALERT_PROTOCOL_VERSION / "tlsv1 alert protocol version"

[wonderingwombat]

I've recently realised that I'm getting the following errors when trying to run tumblr-utils. I downloaded the latest version this morning to see if that fixed it but with no luck.

When I run the following command: python2 tumblr_backup.py -i --no-ssl-verify --save-video BLOGNAME I get 10 copies of the following error: <urlopen error [SSL: TLSV1_ALERT_PROTOCOL_VERSION] tlsv1 alert protocol version (_ssl.c:590)> getting https://api.tumblr.com/v2/blog/BLOGNAME.tumblr.com/posts?reblog_info=true&api_key=APIKEY&limit=1

I have tried with and without the -S and --no-ssl-verify flags.

I'm using Python 2.7.11.

[cebtenzzre]

AFAIK this can happen on macOS when the version of OpenSSL linked to the system Python is too old to handle TLSv1.2. There are two ways you could work around this issue:

• You could try my fork, which handles this the same way pip does
• You could try installing Python 2 via homebrew, which is probably linked to a newer OpenSSL (relevant SO post)

[cebtenzzre]

This can actually occur on any platform if using old enough OpenSSL - but it is common on macOS because the system Python on older releases of OS X is linked to an old version of OpenSSL.