Curl 28 | Hostgator Issue

Not sure this is your issue, but my issue was HostGator. You will need to ask them directly if your shared server has been impacted by a DDoS attack.

Here was my experience…

Intermittent issues with my site for 3 weeks. Regular pages loaded fine, but had errors on cart and checkout pages. Also noticed issues calculating shipping on cart/checkout pages. Issues with secure https connections to wordpress via plugins calling api’s securely…such as Stripe. Occasionally see a wordpress server configuration error on admin pages referencing update.php.

Worked with HostGator from day 1 of issue, nothing found but they said they said my cpanel was sluggish and lacking resources. Escalated to tier 1, tier 2, tier 3, tier 4, linux admins, and all report no issue on their end. They even suggested I upgrade because I was out of resources, yet when I asked them by what metrics, they never showed any proof of resources being over utilized. I migrated databases and sites to a new server to free up resources, but no change. I was persistent for 3 weeks, finally got an honest response confirming shared server had been under a DDoS attack so they were throttling outbound https connections. That night I switched to a new host, problems are gone and site is faster than ever!

I can’t say this is your issue, but curl 28 errors do typically point to server configuration. In this case, it was my host, HostGator, sabotaging our website with how they handle DDoS attacks, and their technicians lack of knowledge/access to pull appropriate logs, nor have a notification system in place to inform customers they will be intentionally blocking secure outbound traffic.

Good luck!