Python requests module exception SSLError - python-3.x

Question

I am getting a requests module exception error when I try to access the http://www.acastipharma.com/ website. I am not having problems with any other website so I believe this is a website specific issue. Here is some example code
import requests
initialURL = 'http://www.acastipharma.com/'
r = requests.get(initialURL)
When I run this code I get an error message that terminates with
requests.exceptions.SSLError: HTTPSConnectionPool(host='www.acastipharma.com', port=443): Max retries exceeded with url: /investors/ (Caused by SSLError(SSLError(1, '[SSL: SSLV3_ALERT_HANDSHAKE_FAILURE] sslv3 alert handshake failure (_ssl.c:645)'),))
An internet search indicates that the problem might be with acastipharma's SSL certificate. I tried installing pyopenssl to make sure I had the latest version of the the module thats checks SSL certificates but that did not solve the problem. I also tried running the requests.get statement with the verify=False option but that was also unsuccessful.
r = requests.get(initialURL, verify=False)
If anybody has any ideas on how to resolve this issue I would appreciate the assistance. I also tried using the older urllib.request package but ran into the same error.
This is an update to my original question: The error message I posted was from trying to run the requests command on one of the acastipharma's website subpages, here is the complete error message I get when I run the code exactly as shown in this question:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/site-packages/urllib3/connectionpool.py", line 601, in urlopen
chunked=chunked)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/site-packages/urllib3/connectionpool.py", line 346, in _make_request
self._validate_conn(conn)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/site-packages/urllib3/connectionpool.py", line 850, in _validate_conn
conn.connect()
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/site-packages/urllib3/connection.py", line 326, in connect
ssl_context=context)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/site-packages/urllib3/util/ssl_.py", line 329, in ssl_wrap_socket
return context.wrap_socket(sock, server_hostname=server_hostname)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/ssl.py", line 376, in wrap_socket
_context=self)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/ssl.py", line 747, in __init__
self.do_handshake()
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/ssl.py", line 983, in do_handshake
self._sslobj.do_handshake()
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/ssl.py", line 628, in do_handshake
self._sslobj.do_handshake()
ssl.SSLError: [SSL: SSLV3_ALERT_HANDSHAKE_FAILURE] sslv3 alert handshake failure (_ssl.c:645)
During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/site-packages/requests/adapters.py", line 440, in send
timeout=timeout
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/site-packages/urllib3/connectionpool.py", line 639, in urlopen
_stacktrace=sys.exc_info()[2])
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/site-packages/urllib3/util/retry.py", line 388, in increment
raise MaxRetryError(_pool, url, error or ResponseError(cause))
urllib3.exceptions.MaxRetryError: HTTPSConnectionPool(host='www.acastipharma.com', port=443): Max retries exceeded with url: / (Caused by SSLError(SSLError(1, '[SSL: SSLV3_ALERT_HANDSHAKE_FAILURE] sslv3 alert handshake failure (_ssl.c:645)'),))
During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<input>", line 1, in <module>
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/site-packages/requests/api.py", line 72, in get
return request('get', url, params=params, **kwargs)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/site-packages/requests/api.py", line 58, in request
return session.request(method=method, url=url, **kwargs)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/site-packages/requests/sessions.py", line 508, in request
resp = self.send(prep, **send_kwargs)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/site-packages/requests/sessions.py", line 640, in send
history = [resp for resp in gen] if allow_redirects else []
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/site-packages/requests/sessions.py", line 640, in <listcomp>
history = [resp for resp in gen] if allow_redirects else []
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/site-packages/requests/sessions.py", line 218, in resolve_redirects
**adapter_kwargs
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/site-packages/requests/sessions.py", line 618, in send
r = adapter.send(request, **kwargs)
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/site-packages/requests/adapters.py", line 506, in send
raise SSLError(e, request=request)
requests.exceptions.SSLError: HTTPSConnectionPool(host='www.acastipharma.com', port=443): Max retries exceeded with url: / (Caused by SSLError(SSLError(1, '[SSL: SSLV3_ALERT_HANDSHAKE_FAILURE] sslv3 alert handshake failure (_ssl.c:645)'),))
I am using Python 3.5.1. I am on a Mac using High Sierra version 10.13.2. I am using requests 2.18.4. Since posting the question I believe the problem lies with my IDE PyCharm's environment. If I use my Python 3.5 environment I have the problem as shown in this question, if I switch the project interpreter to a Python 3.6 Anaconda environment requests will work but unfortunately mysql won't import. Thanks

Answer 1

The OpenSSL version is OpenSSL 0.9.8zh 14 Jan 2016
This (very old and long unsupported) version of OpenSSL does not support the newer ciphers required by this specific web server. This server only supports ECDHE key exchange, which is not supported yet by OpenSSL 0.9.8. This means that the client only offers ciphers to the server which the server will not accept and due to no common ciphers the server will close the connection with an SSL handshake alert.

Answer 2

We can ignore this SSL Error using the following:
import warnings
from urllib3.exceptions import InsecureRequestWarning
warnings.simplefilter('ignore',InsecureRequestWarning)