PHP/Composer SSL Certificate Fix for Laravel

Freelance PHP/Composer SSL Error — Windows / Laragon

I use Laravel. need help fixing a persistent SSL certificate verification issue on my Windows development environment.

Environment:

Windows with Laragon

PHP 8.3.6 (C:\php8\php.exe)

Composer 2.8.3

OpenSSL 3.0.13

Avast antivirus

Problem:

Composer fails to download packages with:

curl error 60: SSL certificate problem: unable to get local issuer certificate

This affects multiple packages and services, not just one dependency. For example, installing Resend or Stripe packages fails. composer diagnose also reports HTTPS connection failures to Packagist, GitHub, and getcomposer.org.

Troubleshooting already performed:

Confirmed the active PHP configuration is C:\php8\php.ini.

Configured both curl.cainfo and openssl.cafile to use C:\php8\extras\ssl\cacert.pem.

Confirmed the CA bundle exists and updated it using the official curl CA bundle.

Confirmed Composer's global cafile points to the same file.

Verified that PHP reads these paths correctly.

Tested curl.exe on Windows: HTTPS succeeds with HTTP 200, while Composer/PHP continues to fail.

Avast is installed and may be inspecting HTTPS connections, but this has not been confirmed.

Required outcome:

Identify and permanently fix the root cause of the PHP/OpenSSL/Composer certificate verification problem so Composer can securely download packages normally.

Do not disable SSL/TLS verification or use insecure Composer settings. Please estimate the cost and time required.