Monitoring a particular web service fails with an SSL connect error (the log contains: Error doing curl_easy_perform [SSL connect error]). I tried connecting to the service via curl directly from the console and it does not exhibit this error.

The URL that we are attempting to monitor is https://secure.braintreepaymentgateway.com/api/transact.php

Here is the output of my request from the console:

curl -v https://secure.braintreepaymentgateway.com/api/transact.php

• About to connect() to secure.braintreepaymentgateway.com port 443 (#0)
• Trying 216.35.170.140... connected
• Connected to secure.braintreepaymentgateway.com (216.35.170.140) port 443 (#0)
• successfully set certificate verify locations:
• CAfile: none
  CApath: /etc/ssl/certs
• SSLv3, TLS handshake, Client hello (1):
• SSLv3, TLS handshake, Server hello (2):
• SSLv3, TLS handshake, CERT (11):
• SSLv3, TLS handshake, Server finished (14):
• SSLv3, TLS handshake, Client key exchange (16):
• SSLv3, TLS change cipher, Client hello (1):
• SSLv3, TLS handshake, Finished (20):
• SSLv3, TLS change cipher, Client hello (1):
• SSLv3, TLS handshake, Finished (20):
• SSL connection using AES256-SHA
• Server certificate:
• subject: /C=US/O=secure.braintreepaymentgateway.com/OU=GT43183304/OU=See www.rapidssl.com/resources/cps (c)09/OU=Domain Control Validated - RapidSSL(R)/CN=secure.braintreepaymentgateway.com
• start date: 2009-02-19 22:23:12 GMT
• expire date: 2010-03-22 21:23:12 GMT
• common name: secure.braintreepaymentgateway.com (matched)
• issuer: /C=US/O=Equifax Secure Inc./CN=Equifax Secure Global eBusiness CA-1
• SSL certificate verify ok.
  > GET /api/transact.php HTTP/1.1
  > User-Agent: curl/7.18.2 (i486-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.18.2 OpenSSL/0.9.8g zlib/1.2.3.3 libidn/1.8
  > Host: secure.braintreepaymentgateway.com
  > Accept: /
  >
  < HTTP/1.1 200 OK
  < Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:53:11 GMT
  < Server: Apache
  < Content-Length: 125
  < Content-Type: text/html
  <
• Connection #0 to host secure.braintreepaymentgateway.com left intact
• Closing connection #0
• SSLv3, TLS alert, Client hello (1):
  response=3&responsetext=Invalid Username&authcode=&transactionid=0&avsresponse=&cvvresponse=&orderid=&type=&response_code=300

For some discussion of this info see http://www.zabbix.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11730