I'm trying to put in place a reverse proxy for an application that is running a tomcat embed server over SSL. The application needs to run over SSL on the port 9002 so I have no way of "disabling SSL" for this app. The current setup schema looks like this: [192.168.0.10:443 - Apache with mod_proxy] --> [192.168.0.10:9002 - Tomcat App] After googling on how to make such a setup (and testing) I came across this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openssl/+bug/861137 Which lead to make my current configuration (to try to emulate the --secure-protocol=sslv3 option of wget) /etc/apache2/sites/enabled/default-ssl: <VirtualHost _default_:443> SSLEngine On SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key SSLProxyEngine On SSLProxyProtocol SSLv3 SSLProxyCipherSuite SSLv3 ProxyPass /test/ https://192.168.0.10:9002/ ProxyPassReverse /test/ https://192.168.0.10:9002/ LogLevel debug ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error-ssl.log CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access-ssl.log combined </VirtualHost> The thing is that the error log is showing error:14077102:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO:unsupported protocol Complete request log: [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [debug] mod_proxy.c(1020): Running scheme https handler (attempt 0) [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [debug] mod_proxy_http.c(1973): proxy: HTTP: serving URL https://192.168.0.10:9002/ [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [debug] proxy_util.c(2011): proxy: HTTPS: has acquired connection for (192.168.0.10) [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [debug] proxy_util.c(2067): proxy: connecting https://192.168.0.10:9002/ to 192.168.0.10:9002 [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [debug] proxy_util.c(2193): proxy: connected / to 192.168.0.10:9002 [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [debug] proxy_util.c(2444): proxy: HTTPS: fam 2 socket created to connect to 192.168.0.10 [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [debug] proxy_util.c(2576): proxy: HTTPS: connection complete to 192.168.0.10:9002 (192.168.0.10) [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [info] [client 192.168.0.10] Connection to child 0 established (server demo1agrubu01.demo.lab:443) [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [info] Seeding PRNG with 656 bytes of entropy [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [debug] ssl_engine_kernel.c(1866): OpenSSL: Handshake: start [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [debug] ssl_engine_kernel.c(1874): OpenSSL: Loop: before/connect initialization [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [debug] ssl_engine_kernel.c(1874): OpenSSL: Loop: unknown state [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [debug] ssl_engine_io.c(1897): OpenSSL: read 7/7 bytes from BIO#7f122800a100 [mem: 7f1230018f60] (BIO dump follows) [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [debug] ssl_engine_io.c(1830): +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [debug] ssl_engine_io.c(1869): | 0000: 15 03 01 00 02 02 50 ......P | [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [debug] ssl_engine_io.c(1875): +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [debug] ssl_engine_kernel.c(1903): OpenSSL: Exit: error in unknown state [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [info] [client 192.168.0.10] SSL Proxy connect failed [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [info] SSL Library Error: 336032002 error:14077102:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO:unsupported protocol [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [info] [client 192.168.0.10] Connection closed to child 0 with abortive shutdown (server example1.domain.tld:443) [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [error] (502)Unknown error 502: proxy: pass request body failed to 172.31.4.13:9002 (192.168.0.10) [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [error] [client 192.168.0.10] proxy: Error during SSL Handshake with remote server returned by /dsfe/ [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [error] proxy: pass request body failed to 192.168.0.10:9002 (172.31.4.13) from 172.31.4.13 () [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [debug] proxy_util.c(2029): proxy: HTTPS: has released connection for (172.31.4.13) [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [debug] ssl_engine_kernel.c(1884): OpenSSL: Write: SSL negotiation finished successfully [Wed Mar 13 20:05:57 2013] [info] [client 192.168.0.10] Connection closed to child 6 with standard shutdown (server example1.domain.tld:443) If I do a wget --secure-protocol=sslv3 --no-check-certificate https://192.168.0.10:9002/ it works perfectly, but from apache is not working. I'm on an Ubuntu Server with the latest updates running apache2 with mod_proxy and mod_ssl enabled: ~$ cat /etc/lsb-release DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu DISTRIB_RELEASE=12.04 DISTRIB_CODENAME=precise DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS" ~# dpkg -s apache2 ... Version: 2.2.22-1ubuntu1.2 ... ~# dpkg -s openssl ... Version: 1.0.1-4ubuntu5.7 ... Hope that anyone may help