How can I handle the error "certificate verify failed: certificate has expired" in TensorFlow?

Question

I'm just starting to create an image classification program in Python with TensorFlow using the CIFAR10 dataset, following this tutorial. Here is my code so far:

import tensorflow as tf
from tensorflow.keras import datasets, layers, models
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
datasets.cifar10.load_data()

I'm getting an error as follows:

  File "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\urllib\request.py", line 1346, in do_open
    h.request(req.get_method(), req.selector, req.data, headers,
  File "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\http\client.py", line 1257, in request
    self._send_request(method, url, body, headers, encode_chunked)
  File "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\http\client.py", line 1303, in _send_request
    self.endheaders(body, encode_chunked=encode_chunked)
  File "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\http\client.py", line 1252, in endheaders
    self._send_output(message_body, encode_chunked=encode_chunked)
  File "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\http\client.py", line 1012, in _send_output
    self.send(msg)
  File "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\http\client.py", line 952, in send
    self.connect()
  File "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\http\client.py", line 1426, in connect
    self.sock = self._context.wrap_socket(self.sock,
  File "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\ssl.py", line 500, in wrap_socket
    return self.sslsocket_class._create(
  File "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\ssl.py", line 1040, in _create
    self.do_handshake()
  File "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\ssl.py", line 1309, in do_handshake
    self._sslobj.do_handshake()
ssl.SSLCertVerificationError: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: certificate has expired (_ssl.c:1129) 

What does this error mean, and what can I do to fix it? I'm a beginner with TensorFlow and haven't been able to find an exact solution for this issue.

Answer 1

Recently had a similar error using python 3.7 and just turned off the verification like this:

import tensorflow as tf
from tensorflow.keras import datasets, layers, models
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
import ssl

ssl._create_default_https_context = ssl._create_unverified_context

datasets.cifar10.load_data()

Check out this issue for more information. You can of course try to install the missing certificates for your Python version. I can confirm that your code works on Google Colab. So it is definitely due to some missing certificates.