GnuTLS recv error (-9): A TLS packet with unexpected length was received. - with Paypal Website Payment Pro

[Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos]

On 02/01/2011 06:12 PM, Zachary Krebs wrote:
> I sent this to the libcurl community and they asked me to ping gnutls
> to see where the issue resides:
> 
> Thanks for considering my support request, and I hope I do not
> agitate/irritate anyone by posting in the wrong place.
> I looked here first: http://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2010-06/0169.html
> and did not find a resolution.
> I am attempting to use the Website Payment Pro Paypal module with Drupal CMS.
[...]
> When I attempt to complete a payment, I get an error in my log:
> "GnuTLS recv error (-9): A TLS packet with unexpected length was received"

Several sites terminate the TLS connection without following the TLS
protocol (i.e. sending closure alerts), but rather terminate the TCP
connection directly. This is a relic of SSLv2 and it seems other
implementations ignore this error. GnuTLS doesn't and thus prints
this error. You could ignore it, but then you could not distinguish
between a premature connection termination (i.e. by someone injecting
a stray TCP termination packet) and normal termination.

regards,
Nikos