Fixed: cURL error 7 failed to connect to port 443

Have trouble connecting to port 443 due to cURL error 7?

When using the website's PayPal or Facebook login scripts, this error is frequent. This mostly happens when the curl request is denied by the server firewall.

As part of our Server Management Services, Skynats frequently receives requests to correct this error.

Let's go over the error in more detail today and see how our tech support engineers resolve it for our clients.

What is cURL error 7?

Have you got any idea when the curl error happens?

The main cause of Curl error 7 is a broken TCP connection to a specific host or port. It yields an error message in the end.

PHP Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Exception' with message 'cURL error: [7] Failed to connect to xxx.paypal.com port 443: Connection refused'

How do we fix cURL error 7: failed to connect to port 443?

We have already thoroughly observed the error. Let's see how effectively our support engineers can fix it now.

When trying to establish a telnet session with the host server, our support engineers encountered some connection issues.

Checking revealed that the WordPress theme update server had blocked the customer's IP. And because of that, the error has happened.

To have the IP whitelisted in their firewall, we asked the customer to get in touch with them. The error was fixed, and the theme activation went smoothly after that.

Conclusion

In short, the firewall blocks the curl request and causes cURL error 7 to fail to connect to port 443 to happen. We went into great detail about this error today and saw how our Support Engineers fixed it for our clients.