IE8 IE7 403 HTTPS/SSL Error MAMP Fix

I was using browserstack.com to test a website on my local machine using MAMP when everything looked fine except on IE8 and IE7. I was getting 403 forbidden errors when trying to load the site in IE7 and 8 on Windows XP. Apparently the default SSL apache configuration in MAMP is set to not accept connections from browsers that don’t support Server Name Indication. “SNI” is supported on Internet Explorer 7.0 or later (on Vista, not XP). The solution is to comment out a line in the apache configuration that rejects requests from non SNI compatible browsers.

MAMP Solution

  1. Open Apache httpd-ssl.conf template file for editing

edit apache httpd-ssl.conf file in mamp template

  1. Comment out line
SSLStrictSNIVHostCheck on

to be

#SSLStrictSNIVHostCheck on

httpd-ssl.conf line to comment out

  1. Restart MAMP to have Apache reload httpd-ssl.conf

restart mamp server

 

Hope this how-to helped save you some of the frustration I had.