OpenSSL issues in Debian Wheezy

I don't know what is exactly going on but I noticed that curl couldn't get secure pages without adding extra switches.

~# curl -v https://api.dreamhost.com
* About to connect() to api.dreamhost.com port 443 (#0)
*   Trying 75.119.208.14...
* connected
* Connected to api.dreamhost.com (75.119.208.14) port 443 (#0)
* successfully set certificate verify locations:
*   CAfile: none
  CApath: /etc/ssl/certs
* SSLv3, TLS handshake, Client hello (1):
(hangs for a minute)
* Unknown SSL protocol error in connection to api.dreamhost.com:443
* Closing connection #0
curl: (35) Unknown SSL protocol error in connection to api.dreamhost.com:443

Now, when I add -1 (force tlsv1) or -3 (force sslv3) curl works flawlessly. The problem is that other programs seem to have similar issues, like python scripts.

When I try openssl it hangs like curl

openssl s_client  -connect api.dreamhost.com:443
CONNECTED(00000003)
(HANGS)

write:errno=104
---
no peer certificate available
---
No client certificate CA names sent
---
SSL handshake has read 0 bytes and written 320 bytes
---
New, (NONE), Cipher is (NONE)
Secure Renegotiation IS NOT supported
Compression: NONE
Expansion: NONE
---

The same happens if I use -tls1_2, but it works If I use -ssl3 switch

Additional Data:

OpenSSL> version
OpenSSL 1.0.1e 11 Feb 2013

Does anybody know how to fix this and make curl or openssl work with default settings? I have another machine with Debian lenny that can run both commands flawlessly without any switch.

Thanks!

-Rodrigo

If you run this site against SSLLabs test, you'll see it's intolerant to long handshakes, a problem that certainly affects your version of OpenSSL.

Reducing the cipher list size should help, for example:

openssl s_client -cipher RSA -connect api.dreamhost.com:443

(You can use the --ciphers option for curl.)

So I went ahead and filed a ticket with Dreamhost (Based on the analysis of @Bruno above) because I was having the same issue. It took a few weeks but they actually fixed it. Any other company they probably would have just put me in tech support hell.